…National League baseball isn't played in late October. In one scene the characters mention that it is, and every male reader confronts me with this. (I guess there are differences between men and women after all!) 

Crescent Blues: Do you plan to continue with the Fenimore series, or branch out into another series or stand-alone book? 

Hathaway: I will continue the Fenimore series as long as people want to read about him. But I am also working on a suspense novel featuring a young female doctor, Jo Banks. This might become a series, but I have to publish the first one first! 

Crescent Blues: Dr. Fenimore discovers the body of a young Native American woman under circumstances that strongly suggest the burial rituals of her tribe, the Lenni-Lenape. Was this inspired by real incidents? And how did you go about researching the Lenni-Lenape culture? 

Hathaway: The Lenni-Lenape theme was the direct result of living in an area of South Jersey (in the summer) where these people once lived. Some of their descendants still live there, including Night Cloud, one of the last remaining chiefs of the Nanticoke tribe.  

I researched the book in many ways -- interviewing the chief, attending pow-wows, visiting Indian museums, but mostly reading. You notice I use the politically incorrect term "Indian." When I interviewed Night Cloud, I scrupulously used the term "Native American" until he burst out impatiently, "Don't use that. Anyone who is born in this country is a Native American. I am an Indian." Also, in an early draft, I had the body facing west, which is the wrong way. The right way is east. A Lenape scholar set me straight about that. 

I had one other nasty research scare. For my knowledge of the Lenape, I relied a lot on a document called the "Walum Olum," an account of the creation myth of the Lenape Indian. Scholars had referred to it for years. The translation was beautiful and I quoted from it freely in my book. One day, in my dentist's office (when my book was already in galley form), I picked up a copy of "The Natural History Magazine". The title of the lead article was "Walum Olum--a Hoax." To my horror, the whole document had been proved to be one gigantic scam pulled off by some 19th century scoundrel! A lot of midnight oil was burned fixing that. 

Crescent Blues: How did the Native Americans you met during your research feel about the idea of your writing about their culture, and how have they reacted to the book? 

Hathaway: To be honest, the only Lenape I know who has read the book is Night Cloud, and he is very formidable. I'm afraid to ask him what he thought.  

Crescent Blues: Your characters range from Main Line Philadelphia society matrons to the underprivileged ghetto youngster Fenimore adopts as a helper. Was this a deliberate attempt to cover a lot of different Philadelphia subcultures, or did that come naturally in writing about the city. 

Hathaway: I was born in Philadelphia and lived there until very recently, and I know it pretty well. I didn't deliberately set out to "cover a lot of Philadelphia subcultures." In fact, there is very little about my writing that is deliberate.  

I don't make outlines. I'm not even sure who the murderer is when I begin. My main characters are little more than sketches or impressions that I try to develop into three-dimensional people as I write. For example, I had no idea when I began this book that Horatio, or "Rat," would become a major character. But now I am so fond of him I have had to go back and put him in the other two books in the series. 

Yes, the book that was published first was actually the third book. So I am working backwards. The second book is the second book. But the third book will, in reality, be the first book. 

The nice thing is, when I introduce Horatio into any scene, I find he brings all the other characters alive. He acts as a kind of catalyst. I don't know what I'd do without him. I have to be very careful not to overuse him or to let him grow up too fast. 

Crescent Blues: Your book won the Malice Domestic/St. Martin's Press Best First Traditional Mystery contest. Could you tell us something about that -- how you came to enter, and how you felt when you learned you'd won? 

Hathaway: The contest. Whew! I almost didn't…

Robin Hathaway - Continued