I updated my blog on Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/287052.Susan_Glickman/blog
Archive for year: 2015
Great review of Safe as Houses in the Globe and Mail!
“It’s great to read a book set in Toronto and Susan Glickman, poet, editor, critic and creative writing professor, does it proud in this debut mystery set in the lovely hidden enclave of Wychwood Park. The story begins with bookstore owner Liz Ryerson walking her dog in the park. Dog smells something, goes to hunt, scratches up a body. Suddenly, we are in whodunit land, with a totally familiar setting which Glickman sketches like a master. Reading along, I was reminded often of the late great Eric Wright’s wonderful cop novels and Jack Batten’s PI stories, both located in Toronto neighbourhoods with people anyone might recognize as types. All that said, the mystery is a good one, with a nice puzzle and a deft, smart woman to sort out the clues. It’s short and fun and well-written and perfect for a rainy afternoon at home. Let’s hope Liz Ryerson returns soon.”
- Margaret Cannon, The Globe & Mail, Saturday November 14, 2015
Blog post about Safe as Houses
https://deborahserravalle.wordpress.com/tag/susan-glickman/
BOOK REVIEW: SAFE AS HOUSES BY SUSAN GLICKMAN
A Brief Synopsis
While walking in her dog, Jasper, in Toronto’s Hillcrest Village, indie book store owner, Liz Ryerson, stumbles upon a corpse. Liz soon discovers the murdered man is, James Scott, a realtor who recently gave her an appraisal on the building she co-owns with her playboy ex-husband, Adam.
Liz’s complex but predictable life is suddenly in upheaval: Adam is leaving on an extended trip with his beautiful, young lover, Laura; her daughter, Samantha, has taken up with a “bad boy” and is exhibiting alarming signs of anorexia; and her son, Josh, is off doing his own thing. To complicate matters further, Adam is pressuring Liz to sell the property which also houses her book store, Inside of a Dog. Amidst this chaos, Liz abetted by her eccentric new friend, widowed retired classics professor, Maxime Bertrand, embarks on a quest to solve the murder of James Scott.
My Comments
In her recent novel, Safe as Houses, Susan Glickman offers a convincing portrayal of a woman attempting to exert control over her world gone mad. Twists, turns and diversions in the story propel it forward at a satisfying pace. Liz is a likeable character and her relationship with Max is endearing but plausible. For book lovers, Liz’s store, Inside of a Dog, is a charming character unto itself. Still, the story has a dark side and it is in this underbelly, Safe as Houses, sets itself apart from your predictable, amateur sleuthing story.
Ms Glickman choses to unravel the underlying events in an unexpected and well-considered format: interspersed chapters are skillfully told from the point-of-view of the victim. In this way, Liz’s story and the victim’s unfold in tandem to a satisfying conclusion.
My Final Word
Safe as Houses is a well-paced mystery having all the usual “suspects” one expects in that genre. The twist is in the telling. And that, in my opinion, is what sets this book apart from other mysteries on my shelf.
Nice mention of Safe as Houses in a column about books about bookshops!
Safe As Houses, by Susan Glickman
What is it about bookshops and murder? Glickman’s new novel is a cozy murder mystery about how lives are transformed after the discovery of a body in Toronto’s tony Wychwood Park neighbourhood.
But one of the most delicious parts of the book is the setting: a bookshop owned by Glickman’s protagonist, Liz Ryerson, near Bathurst and St. Clair in downtown Toronto. The shop is called “Outside of a Dog,” from the quote by Harpo Marx (“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend“) and also because there is indeed a dog (with whom Liz is out walking when she stumbles across the corpse). And the reader is able to vicariously experience the joy Liz takes in working in her shop. She spends time thoughtfully curating her collection and assembling themed tables, and reading the lists of books within the text was so much fun and an absolute bookish pleasure.
Kerry Clare, http://49thshelf.com/Blog/2015/10/01/Books-About-Bookshops
Safe as Houses now available.
Book launch
Wednesday September 9th, 7-9 pm
at TYPE BOOKS, 883 Queen Street West, Toronto
From the CBC CANADA WRITES website
Susan Glickman: How I Wrote Safe as Houses
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/2015/05/susan-glickman-how-i-wrote-safe-as-houses.html
In most mystery novels, the person who finds the body falls off the radar as soon as the police arrive. But not in Susan Glickman’s Safe as Houses. For her first mystery, Glickman wanted to explore how it would feel for someone to find a dead body in the place they go for their daily dose of tranquillity.
We spoke to Susan Glickman about how she wrote Safe As Houses, from the inspiration of her dog Toby to finding her setting, literally, in her own backyard.
IMPENDING DOOM
The idea for Safe as Houses came from walking my dog around my neighbourhood. He took off on me in this beautiful enclave in Toronto called Wychwood Park, which has a private tennis court and a beautiful duck pond and is surrounded by elegant Arts and Crafts houses. For some bizarre reason, I thought of my dog finding a dead body in the bushes. This wasn’t prompted by any evil associations with the neighbourhood. It just has to do with my own sense of impending doom and having read too many murder mysteries.
DEADLY PROFESSION
Wychwood Park is a beautiful neighbourhood. You can’t imagine anything more bucolic. There are giant oak trees and naturalized lawns full of bluebells and daffodils. It looks like a little piece of England. The phrase “safe as houses” came into my mind. It’s an old English expression. I thought it had to do with one’s feeling of safety when in a solid structure like a house, but actually it has to do with real estate being the least volatile of investments. When I investigated this saying I decided the dead man had to be a real estate agent.
NEW YORKER
Maxime Bertrand is Liz Ryerson’s sidekick. He is a retired classics professor, originally from Montreal, who is lovingly based on an old friend of mine who I miss very much. He was a retired English professor and my doctoral dissertation supervisor. People who knew Sheldon Zitner might recognize him a bit in Maxime—although Maxime is much less acerbic than my friend, who was a New Yorker and had a very wry sense of humour… It’s not so much him as a character, but it’s the relationship that Maxime has with Liz. They have an almost father/daughter relationship.
FOR THE LOVE OF TOBY
One of the things that happens when you write fiction is you get to fill in missing pieces of your own life. I love my neighbourhood, but we don’t have a bookstore. So I made my protagonist, Liz Ryerson, own the store that I wish existed in my neighbourhood… I also made her dog a cross between a border collie and a lab—other than that, he has all the qualities of my own little dog Toby, who’s small and can’t fetch a Frisbee. So I decided if I was going to give myself a bookstore I was also going to give my dog the body he wanted so he could catch a Frisbee.
I have added a new page about editing.
If you wish to inquire about an editing job, please go to that page first.
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