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| In Memoriam. 1-28-2007. |
| While visiting Poisoned Pen bookstore in Phoenix, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Barbara Seranella. I didn’t know Barbara very well, but I knew her well enough to say with confidence that I will never forget her—her sense of humor and her radiant toughness. Few people could write a mystery series featuring a mechanic as a protagonist. The number of women who could do it probably comes to…well, now that she’s gone, I doubt anyone could. I hope someone proves me wrong. She would certainly want me proved wrong. We met at a joint signing at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena. I read first, delivering my typically stiff and tweedy presentation before turning the mike over to her. She immediately showed me up by declining to read—opting instead to tell dirty jokes and spin stories from her extremely colorful past. Unsurprisingly, she got lots more laughs. By her own description, Barbara’s early years were wild, full of hard living, and over the last year and a half, she underwent two liver transplants. The first one had failed, she told me after the reading, but the second would succeed because she’d gotten the new liver from “an eighteen year-old! I feel young again!” She then hiked up her shirt to show off the enormous scar bisecting her abdomen. “Check that out!” The mystery circuit is fairly intimate, and I took comfort in running into her again this past October, at a conference in North Carolina. She looked thin and pale, but her mouth was still as fresh as ever. I sat with her at the farewell dinner, where we were both called upon to pull tickets for a raffle. I remember watching her reach into the heap of paper, root around in the basket, make a little production out of it, her moment in the spotlight and goddammit she was going to enjoy it. And I remember her later that evening, back at the inn where we were both housed: slowly mounting the steps to her room, breathing hard, leaning on the banister, cracking wise even as she sank, exhausted, into the darkness. |
