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Fiction in search of a publisher:
The Juror Investigates is a classic mystery with twists. It’s "courtroom drama from the juror’s point of view" meets "tongue-in-cheek noir whodunit" with a beautiful but prissy librarian sleuth (Miss T. Iris Ginge) and a loose-cannon, meter-maid sidekick named Calamity.
The novel was inspired by my own traumatic experience as a juror in a kidnapping and sexual-assault trial in Cook County Criminal Courthouse, where Al Capone was arraigned in 1931 (and where my protagonist’s father was convicted of corruption). After my jury duty, I knew I had to write about the criminal justice system. I’d been thinking about a librarian-sleuth for some time. Then I realized that a juror also has great sleuthing potential.
Agents and editors: For a proposal package, please email me at ccm@ccmambretti.com
I'm a melting-pot American, with Sephardic Jewish ancestors and Native American ancestors and many, many Celtic ones. My last name is my husband's, but like him I have a fair number of Italian ancestors, too. My historical fiction draws on all these roots. "Painter of the Seven-eyed Beast" and "The Mute Monja" (short stories published in AHMM) are set in 12th century Catalonia (two centuries before the Inquisition banished my ancestors from the Iberian peninsula). Sleuths Ramon and Ermessenda are fresco artists, whose works I wish I could have studied in college, when I minored in Art History. "The Dead of Winter" (short story published in AHMM) draws on my Native American roots and love of 17th century England and its colonies. And in "The Juror Investigates" (my WIP novel) I plunge into the weird 1950s when I grew up--and into elegant, tough Chicago.
The Chicago suburb where I write is the site of the Marx Brothers' Farm and perhaps was the first rail-commuter community in the U.S. It was founded after the Great Chicago Fire by a brick manufacturer who was afraid of the fire-prone city. My house is over a hundred years old and haunted by interesting spirits (not the least of which are my husband and my pet Greek tortoise). I've lived in "this old house" almost since receiving my Ph.D. (in 17th century English literature and bibliography [a.k.a. non-forensic document analysis]) from the University of Chicago.