The women in my mother’s generation didn’t need consciousness-raising sessions in order to make sense of their worlds. They already had a built in support group—their neighbors. These were the women they’d meet with almost every day for forenoon coffee or afternoon coffee. Ten AM was the preferred morning meeting time and afternoon coffee started up about three or so—before they hauled out their pressure cookers to start dinner. They’d sit around talking about this and that, drinking coffee, with some of them, pregnant or not, smoking like fiends. I can still reel off their names: Mrs. Whitaker, Mrs. Toon, Lillyan Weatherford, Wanda Seale, Verna Dunkerson, Harriet Smith.

The group moved from house to house in a progression that made sense to them and was a total mystery to their children. Each day’s hostess provided the treats that went along with the coffee. My mother often made doughnuts out of a roll of Pillsbury biscuits that she deep fried and then rolled in sugar. In the decades since Mrs. Whitaker passed away I’ve never yet met a lemon meringue pie that measured up to the ones her produced from the oven of her aging green and pale yellow stove.

On Monday mornings when my mother did the weekly washing, she and whoever lived next door would chat over the fence while she hung wet laundry on the clothes line. I know that in a world full of too many kids and not enough money that those daily coffee klatches and over the fence discussions sustained my mother in good times and bad. When one of us spilled off a bicycle on a recently graveled street, she had someone who understood about cleaning up that kind of bloody mess. When someone, namely me, got stung by a scorpion on my big toe, it was Mrs. Whiteaker who came to our aid with a bottle of bluing which immediately did the trick. Note to myself: Do they still sell bluing?

Having close neighbors is one of the things I’ve missed in my rolling stone adult life. When we lived in the barrio in Tucson, most of my neighbors spoke Spanish while I did not. During my years of teaching on the reservation, our house outside Three Points was seven miles to the nearest neighbor or telephone. No clothes-hanging chats from that far away, I’m afraid. I’m still in touch with the gay couple who who lived next door when I first arrived in Seattle, but those guys don’t live in Seattle any more, and neither do I.

So no, I’m not saying goodbye to a physical neighbor this morning. I’m saying farewell to a literary one, P.D. James. I never met Baroness James of Holland Park in person, but she and I have been next door neighbors on the mystery shelves of bookstores for the last three decades.

P.D. James, the “queen of mystery,” died this week at age 94. I learned from reading her obituary that we had a lot in common. Even though we were generations apart, I knew of course that our pen names utilized our real initials—P.D. for Phyllis Dorothy and J.A. for Judith Ann—for the same reason: Women weren’t supposed to write police procedurals.

Her husband, a physician, returned home from World War II with what we’d now probably think of as PTSD. Consequently, even though she was a married woman she was her family’s sole support. She had to have a “real” job and the only time she had available for writing was in the early mornings. Boy did I relate to that part of her story! She was forty-two when her first book was published. I was forty-one.  Once when I mentioned that to a “youthful” interviewer, she blurted out, “But you were so OLD when you started writing.” I’m sure P.D. James heard that, too. It wasn’t until book eight that she “hit it big.”  For me it was more like book fifteen or so.

For years I know I’ve benefited from having my books next to hers in bookstores. We probably both have gained cross-over readers that way, but just because we were both right there didn’t mean I actually read her books.  It wasn’t until I picked up Death Comes to Pemberly a couple of years ago that I was hooked. Since then I’ve been making up for lost time.

On the road, when people have asked me about the possibility of retiring, one of my standard replies has been, “I want to be P.D. James when I grow up.”

And that’s still true. At age 94, writing or not, she was still a writer. She died peacefully at home. Those things work for me.  My mother was 94 when she died.  If I make it that long, I still have a quarter of a century of working and of keeping on keeping on. And dying peacefully at home sounds like the right way to go.

P.D.James and J.A. Jance never shared a cup of coffee or even a cup of tea or chatted over a clothes line and a picket fence. If we had ever gotten together, though, I’m sure we would have had plenty to say about being “women of mystery.”

So Hail and Farewell to my literary next-door-neighbor—from J.A. to P.D.

R.I.P.

PS:

It seems that A Last Goodbye, or as we call it in our house—the Nobella Novella, will debut at # 9 on the NYTimes list of E-book Bestsellers. After spending the last four years of her life being Bella, the Book Tour Dog, it’s about time she gets to have her star-turn. So, as my editor said on the phone, “Hats off, and dog treats and champagne all around!”

Way to go, Bella girl! Way to go!

To answer some of the questions showing up in the comment lines: A Last Goodbye is currently in e-book format only. Priced at 99 cents it’s not exactly breaking the bank. It WILL BE AVAILABLE IN DEAD TREE FORMAT in the paperback edition of Moving Target which goes on sale December 30th.