Mother-Daughter Murder Night

by Nina Simon

Lana Rubicon, at 57, is a stylish, high-powered and successful real estate developer in Los Angeles. Then, to her shock, she is diagnosed with brain cancer. Suddenly this is something she can’t bulldoze her way through. She needs surgery, and will need help while she recovers. And she wants to keep her condition secret from her colleagues and clients.

She calls her daughter Beth, who is a nurse. They aren’t estranged, but also aren’t close: Beth got pregnant as a teenager sixteen years ago, and insisted on keeping her baby, leaving home to live in a small house that her mother owned near Elkhorn Slough, a tidal wetland and marine preserve three hours north of Los Angeles. That’s where she still lives with her daughter Jack (Jacqueline).

Beth arranges for Lana to have surgery from a top oncologist, and to come live with them while she undergoes chemotherapy.

Jack, Beth’s fifteen-year-old daughter, loves the water. She has a weekend job as a kayak tour guide, leading small groups of tourists through the waters of the slough. Despite her young age, she’s skilled and reliable, one of the most responsible employees of the Kayak Shack. She’s hoping to save enough money to buy her own sailboat.

One Sunday morning, when Jack is leading a kayak tour group, a father and son on the tour discover a dead man’s body at the edge of the slough. Jack’s boss is away and she’s in charge of the group, so she has to take control and answer police questions.

And when it’s discovered that the dead person was signed up for Jack’s Friday evening tour, the police start treating her as a suspect.

This puts Lana into high gear. She loves her granddaughter dearly, and decides that to protect her they need to find the killer themselves. Despite dealing with chemotherapy and the aftermath of cancer surgery, Lana assumes her most intimidating persona, dressing in designer suits and high heels to take on bureaucratic clerks and officials.  She and Jack begin investigating in earnest, and Beth, somewhat reluctantly, joins in.

They eventually do solve the crime, but not before facing some real perils and danger. The story is convoluted, fast-moving and suspenseful. The three main characters are appealing, and seeing their relationships unfold is part of the pleasure of the book, which is both a who-done-it and a family drama, told with wit and humour.

Nina Simon was born in Los Angeles in 1981. Just 42 now, she’s had a varied and colorful life. In high school she excelled in math and science — leading her to study electrical engineering in university — but she also loved to write, and wrote slam poetry in her spare time. Joining NASA as an engineer, she decided that wasn’t for her. She then worked with a series of museums, initially as an exhibit designer and eventually as a museum director. She wrote a popular blog in which she developed a vision of community participation in museums and theatres, and became a sought-after keynote speaker and consultant. She self-published two successful non-fiction books, and founded a non-profit that created digital tools to help civic and cultural organizations work with communities.

She never intended to become a crime fiction writer, but fell into it when her “tough, funny mother” was diagnosed with cancer. Nina quit her job to care for her mother, and needed something they could talk about other than cancer. Both loved reading mysteries, so she decided to create a story with fictional characters something like them. Nina would write in the morning while her mother slept, and then they’d discuss what she’d written. The book became a kind of love letter to her mother, creating Lana Rubicon as a feisty superhero at a time when Nina’s real-life mother was being “pushed around by doctors.”

From something written initially just for their personal comfort and entertainment, the book has become a public success. It was published in September 2023 to considerable acclaim, becoming a New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick.

Nina lives with her husband and daughter in an off-grid community in the Santa Cruz mountains.

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