For the last 12 years, Skyler Moore has struggled with a crippling sense of guilt and an inability to be around large groups. An artist who specializes in collages, her work is about to be displayed in a prestigious art gallery and, hopefully, it will help her shaky finances as she wants to become pregnant through in vitro before her biological clock runs out.
But hearing she may have to speak to the large crowd expected at the gallery greatly increases her social anxiety. Add to that, she still is dealing with her mother who blames Skyler for what happened to Chloe, her younger half-sister 12 years ago after they became separated at a party.
Told Chloe had left, Skyler returned to the hotel where she was staying and, unusual for her, indulged in a one night stand with Christopher Whaley, an older, handsome—and married–man she just met. And so sets the stage for Kate White’s newest mystery, “Between Two Strangers.”
Her half-sister never left the party, her body was found days later at the bottom of a hill on the property. As for Whaley, he and Skyler never meet again but his lawyer contacts her a few nights before her gallery show. Whaley has recently died and left her several million dollars much to the anger of his family. Soon she is being harassed and threatened, her apartment broken into, and her career as an artist stymied when her collages, on display at the gallery are defaced. Skyler, unsure of herself as it is, must face the threats and accusations made against her by his family.
White, the author of 17 novels, was formerly the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine and uses her knowledge of New York and the New York art scene to create a fast paced novel that takes us into that world when Skyler works on a collage that she hopes will help unlock the secret of her half-sister’s death.
I ask White, during a long phone conversation, how she was able to write best selling novels and work as editor-in-chief of an extremely popular woman’s magazine, That, in itself, must surely have been a full-time job.
“I was definitely burning the candle at both ends,” she says, adding that when she first got the call to take over the job she had completed four chapters of her first foray into mystery writing. “I put those aside.”
Uber-successful at editing—she took Cosmo to the number one best seller of single issue copies (the magazine was famous for its covers and inspired advice to women), selling two million copies a month.
“I loved the job, my team, the magazine,” says White.
But she also loved mysteries, having become addicted to the Nancy Drew mystery series at age 12. And so despite being married with two children and working as editor-in-chief, she returned to the mystery novel she was writing.
When I ask where she gets her ideas, White says from many places. She keeps a file of news clippings and notes. A plot, which she is meticulously outlined, can come from overhearing a conversation on an elevator. Yes, she says. She eavesdrops.
After 14 years at the helm of Cosmo (how many other magazines have a nickname?), White decided to focus on writing full-time. Now she spends part of the year in Uruguay where she and her husband have a place in a small beach town where she enjoys the lavender sunsets, the food and being warm in the winter.
It is also the perfect place for White to write and she is already at work on her next mystery.
For more information on White including upcoming author events, visit her website katewhite.com
This article previously appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times.
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