Naked Came The Phoenix

Introduction

When my agent first suggested that I try my hand at putting together a novel like Naked Came the Manatee, a collaborative effort first serialized in the Miami Herald by a baker's dozen of top Florida journalists, including Carl Hiassen, Dave Barry, and Edna Buchanan, I smiled. I remembered-because yes, I am that old-a 1969 literary hoax perpetrated on the reading public by Mike McGrady and twenty-four of his Long Island Newsday coworkers; an unabashed sexual romp entitled Naked Came the Stranger that succeeded beyond McGrady's wildest dreams. In fact, "Naked Came…" is now synonymous with a collaborative novel written serially.

"Penelope Ashe," Naked Came the Stranger's fictional suburban housewife/author, wasn't the first to pen such a collaboration, of course. The roots go back much further, to 1931 Britain and The Floating Admiral, written by "Certain Members of the Detection Club," including Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, and other giants of the mystery genre. Wouldn't it be fun, I thought, to assemble a group of modern mystery and suspense writers-all women-write such a novel, and donate a portion of our royalties to breast cancer research? I sketched a cast of characters, plopped them down in an exclusive health spa because, let's face it, there are dozens of interesting ways to bump off a character in a health spa, and Naked Came the Phoenix was born. Twelve women accepted my invitation, Nevada Barr picked up her pen, and six thousand words later, the game was afoot.

The rules were simple. Each chapter was to be written in the third person and, in the spirit of The Floating Admiral, with a definite solution in view, even though we were well aware that subsequent authors might take-indeed were expected to take-the plot in divergent directions. "It was dangerously liberating to know I didn't personally have to deal with the consequences of whatever I put in my chapter," wrote Nancy Pickard.

Although authors were cautioned to avoid cliff-hanger endings that would require Houdini-like efforts on the part of the next author (and our heroine), "the real fun" comes, according to Laurie R. King, "in seeing thirteen sweet-tempered lady crime writers stab each other thoughtfully in the back." Nancy, too, "loved the diabolical feeling of cooking up an outrageous plot twist and cackling, 'Heh, heh, heh, let's see what you do with this, Lisa!' " Because, as the game is played, there is no going back. No fair asking a previous author to change a clue. Against the rules to beg her to bring a promising character back to life. Pssst! Hide this bloody knife in the potted palm in chapter two, will you? is simply not allowed. Each writer is left to plant a new clue, target a fresh victim, point the finger at another suspect, introduce a new character, catch another in a lie, overhear a heated conversation-on and on-until it falls to the hapless writer of the final chapter to pick up all the problematic threads and tie them off in a nice, neat solution. I am deeply grateful that Laurie R. King volunteered for this task and that she did it so brilliantly.

And we had fun. Anne Perry enjoyed the discipline of writing about characters already created and thinking, "What can I do with them to give the story a twist and stay within the bounds set?" For her and others, it was the chance to try out a completely different time and place setting-the present day United States, for example, as opposed to Victorian London or sometime in the future. Still others relished the opportunity to experiment with new characters and new voices. What I enjoyed most was borrowing a character from my Hannah Ives mystery series and giving him a job at Phoenix Spa. And, of course, we all felt it necessary to do exhaustive, firsthand research in luxury health spas all across the country.

As Naked Came the Phoenix goes to press, it pleases me to learn of a new link with The Floating Admiral. We have come full circle, with one of our sisterhood, Val McDermid, being elected to membership in the famed Detection Club.

Val's a professional. And as Laurie reminds me, it takes a professional to play the game well. I think you will find thirteen of them here.

MARCIA TALLEY

Annapolis, Maryland

May 2001