Burning Cold
Lisa Lieberman
(Cara Walden Mystery, #2)
Publication date: September 12th 2017
Genres: Adult, Historical, Mystery
Budapest: 1956. Newlywed Cara Walden’s brother Zoltán has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution, harboring a deadly wartime secret. Will Cara or the Soviets find him first?
Cutting short her honeymoon in Paris to rescue a sibling she’s never met was not Cara’s idea, but her husband Jakub has a reckless streak, and she is too much in love to question his judgment. Together with her older brother Gray, they venture behind the Iron Curtain, seeking clues to Zoltán’s whereabouts among his circle of fellow dissidents, all victims of the recently overthrown Communist regime. One of them betrayed him, and Cara realizes that the investigation has put every person they’ve met at risk. Inadvertently, they’ve also unmasked a Russian spy, who is now tailing them in the hope that they will lead him to Zoltán.
The noir film of Graham Greene’s The Third Man inspires Lisa Lieberman’s historical thriller. Burning Cold features a compelling female protagonist who comes to know her own strength in the course of her adventures.
Interview with Lisa Lieberman
What
inspired you to write Burning Cold?
My series is set in the 1950s and revolves
around old movies. I love noir and one of my favorite pictures is The Third
Man (1949), a collaboration between author Graham Greene and director Carol
Reed starring Orson Welles in a fascinating, sinister role. Roger Ebert
described the postwar setting of The Third Man as “the exhausted
aftermath of Casablanca.” It’s a story about
an American (Joseph Cotten) who is invited to visit a friend (Welles) in
postwar Vienna, but arrives to find that his friend has died in a car accident.
He starts asking questions—you know how those brash Americans are always
stirring up trouble—and is soon being hunted by his friend’s blackmarket
cronies. Very suspenseful!
I transposed the story to Hungary. Cara
Walden’s
brother Zoltán has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution,
harboring a deadly wartime secret. Together with her older brother Gray, Cara
and her new husband venture behind the Iron Curtain, seeking clues to Zoltán’s
whereabouts among his circle of fellow dissidents, all victims of the recently
overthrown Communist regime. One of them betrayed him, and Cara realizes that
the investigation has put every person they’ve
met at risk. Inadvertently, they’ve also unmasked a
Russian spy, who is now tailing them in the hope that they will lead him to
Zoltán.
Can you
tell us a little bit about the characters of Burning Cold?
Cara
is a young actress and nightclub singer, the daughter of a famous expatriate
Hungarian director, Robbie Walden (born Roby Szabó), the sort who didn’t
practice monogamy. She and her older brother Gray, a blacklisted Hollywood
screenwriter and closeted homosexual, were the products of different dalliances, and it turns out that
Robbie also fathered a son back in Hungary, Zoltán.
When
the book opens, Cara and her new husband Jakub are on their honeymoon in Paris
when they learn about the outbreak of the Hungarian revolution. A Polish Jew
who fought with the French Resistance during World War II, Jakub has a reckless
streak and convinces the others to go in and rescue Zoltán during a lull in the
fighting. But Zoltán is one of those purist types, a poet, who might prefer to
martyr himself for the cause.
So,
those are the major characters, but there are some colorful minor characters as
well including their guide in Budapest, József, a decent, broken man who knew
their brother in prison; Ames, a hard-drinking British tabloid journalist; György,
a childhood friend of their father’s and the sole survivor of the Jewish
community that Robbie fled when he emigrated to America, and Zoltán’s wife
Anna, a physician who runs an orphanage for the abandoned children of the
regime’s so-called enemies.
You know I think we
all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and why?
Graham
Greene (as if you couldn’t tell . . .) He takes on serious questions but never
takes himself too seriously. And he writes beautifully.
If you could
time-travel would you travel to the future or the past? Where would you like to
go and why would you like to visit this particular time period?
Honestly, I feel as if I am traveling everywhere I’ve
wanted to go by writing these historical mysteries. London during the
coronation of Queen Elizabeth, Sicily, Cannes, Monace for Grace Kelly’s
wedding, hanging out in Paris and listening to great jazz, watching the events
of the Hungarian Revolution unfold right before my very eyes. Cara’s adventures
give me an excuse to visit dangerous times and places from the safety of my
study.
Do you have any
little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?
Sadly, our sweet Golden Retriever Jasmine
succumbed to a brain tumor last summer. She was thirteen and my kids can barely
remember a time when she wasn’t part of their lives. We’re just starting to
think about getting another dog, visiting shelters, waiting for that special
dog to claim us.
Here she is in her favorite place at the top
of the stairs.
Thanks
for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit with us today.
Author Bio:
Lisa Lieberman is the author of the Cara Walden series of historical mysteries featuring blacklisted Hollywood people in exotic European locales. All the Wrong Places and Burning Cold are available from Passport Press in print and e-book.
Trained as a modern European cultural and intellectual historian, Lieberman abandoned a perfectly respectable academic career for the life of a vicarious adventurer through dangerous times and places. She has written extensively on postwar Europe and is the founder of the classic movie blog Deathless Prose. She now directs a nonprofit foundation dedicated to redressing racial and economic inequity in public elementary and secondary schools. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.
After dragging their three children all over Europe while they were growing up, Lisa and her husband are happily settled in Amherst, Massachusetts.
1 comments:
Thanks for hosting today, Nancy! :)
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