Writer Ellen Hart cooks up crimes

“People eat and breathe stories. We live by and test ourselves by stories. They are all-nourishing,” said local author Ellen Hart. When she tells a story, it’s deliciously murderous; readers tired of one-dimensional male private investigators find her mysteries as addictive as potato chips but more nourishing.

First love
Hart fell in love with crime and mystery novels as a child, and she’s translated that love into a vocation: Over the past 20 years she has written 23 mystery novels. She was 200 pages into her first one when she realized she didn’t know what she was doing. She started reading crime novels again in order to understand the craft. After she finished her first novel, “Hallowed Murder,” she sold it to a small independent publisher. A few years later, just before her fourth book came out, Ballantine Publishing group, a division of Random House, bought all three mysteries-one of the first series ever to go from a small press directly to a New York publisher.

Cooking up a crime
Prior to writing full time, Hart was a chef for 14 years; her expertise in the kitchen has found its way into both of her book series. Hart’s Sophie Greenway series of eight books features a husband-and-wife sleuthing team. Her Jane Lawless series (14 books) features an amateur sleuth who is a lesbian and owns a restaurant in Minneapolis. In “Night Vision,” (published in December 2006), Lawless and her witty, eccentric best friend, Cordelia Thorn, help a movie star who is stalked by the ex-boyfriend who served time in prison for terrorizing her. Critics call the book “entertaining and unpredictable” and tag Lawless and Thorn “the most refreshing, entertaining, and cerebrally stimulating duo since … Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.” Hart has won three Minnesota Book Awards, two Golden Crown Literary Awards and five Lambda Literary Awards.

Hart also teaches mystery writing. Everything, she said, must relate to the central mystery. “Nobody wants to see Miss Marple in the bushes,” she quipped, explaining that a good mystery should be entertaining and have three basic elements: a crime, detection and a solution. “It’s like a three-act play and the story’s tension builds with the slow, constant release of information.”

Social change
One thing Hart finds satisfying is the mystery novel as a force for social change. She reflected, “Mystery novels will become some of the most important bridges over which society can walk toward a more complex and mature understanding of what it’s like to be something other than mainstream.” Hart has shepherded some readers across that bridge; she notes that today’s mysteries include racially diverse and gender-inclusive characters, not to mention gay and lesbian ones. Along with being traditionally under-represented in popular culture, Hart said, gays and lesbians have usually been portrayed as “closeted, twisted souls-either the criminal or victim,” rarely the hero. Recently that has changed, she said, “Today, we have gay and lesbian heroes.”

Her life today
Hart, who was born in Minneapolis, lives and writes there. She and Kathy, her partner of 29 years, have two daughters and five grandchildren. Cooking is still a passion and Hart plans to develop a cookbook based on the Lawless series. Additionally, she has written a screenplay and plans to do a “stand alone” novel.

Hart works on three novels at a time and publishes about one a year. She’s not in it for the money, she said, observing, “Becoming a full-time writer, unless you get very lucky, is a job that pays very little, has no appreciable benefits, and no retirement package. If you’re not doing it for the love of the game, for the richness it brings to your life, there are a lot better, more lucrative, and easier ways to support yourself. I write because I love it.”