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Woman Of Mystery

For mystery writer Lee Harris, another holiday
means another intriguing whodunit.

SUZANNE CHESSLER
Si'mcial to the Jewish News

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5/21
1999

84 Detroit Jewish News

hat could a nice, young
ex-nun be doing in an
old Jewish neighbor-
hood?
In Lee Harris territory, she's looking
for a murderer.
The Father's Day Murder (Fawcett
Gold Medal Paperback; $5.99),
Harris' latest mystery, places sleuth
Christine Bennett in the aftermath of
a deadly reunion. Eight friends and
spouses are suspects in the slaying of
the ninth, whose body is found in the
men's room as the others are partying
and reminiscing.
The paperback, filled with Jewish
characters, follows The Yom Kippur
Murder and The Passover Murder.
Certainly not ethnocentric, Harris'
series of 11 mysteries also includes The
Good Friday Murder (nominated for
an Edgar award in 1993 for mystery
writing), The Christmas Night Murder
and The St. Patrick Day Murder.
"Each book in the series advances
the life of Christine Bennett and her
husband, [a cop-turned lawyer]," says
Harris, who writes family and roman-
tic novels under her real name, Syrell
Rogovin Leahy.
Harris, who will sign copies of her
book May 27 at Barnes & Noble in
Bloomfield Hills, and May 25 at Aunt
Agatha's in Ann Arbor, had a reunion
of sorts while working on this new
edition. It took her back to the area in
the Bronx where her cousins grew up
and where she spent time.
On a more intimate level, her per-
sonality is at the core of her amateur
detective's.
"Because she is a devout Catholic
and I am a Jew, I don't have a religious
attachment to her, but as a person, she
does the kinds of things that I
.admire," says Harris, who lives in New
Jersey. "When she left the convent, she
immediately got a job as a teacher,
and I have done a lot of teaching.
She's an honest person with friends
who are not necessarily like her, and I
do signings with three writing friends
who are different kinds of people. She
enjoys gardening, which I do."
One of Harris' recurring characters
is Melanie Gross, Bennett's Jewish

neighbor. "She has introduced Chris to
Jewish people and practices and the
celebration of Jewish holidays, expand-
ing and enriching her life," says Harris.
Harris' fictional works came after
years of writing training materials and
taking on scholarly projects.
"I went to Cornell University and
majored in German linguistics, explains
the author, who had a Fulbright

Syrell Rog-ovin Leahy, a.k.a. Lee Harris,
072 series sleuth Christine Bennett:
"Because she is a devout Catholic and I
am a Jew, I don't have a religious attach-
ment to her, but as a person, she does the
kinds of things that I admire."

Scholarship for study in Germany "I
went to Columbia University for my
master's degree and wrote a book,
Modem English. Sentence Structure, which
has been used in schools.
"I worked on a doctoral dissertation
on linguistics and gave it up to write
my first novel, A Book of Ruth, which
is about a Jewish teacher falling in love
with a Catholic priest. In 1989, after
six books, I decided that my career as
a mainstream novelist was not going
where I wanted it to go, and I
switched to mysteries.
"I had an idea for a book I hadn't
perceived as a mystery but was one