Chan, Cassandra

(Cassandra M. Chan)

PERSONAL: Female.

ADDRESSES: Home—Port St. Lucie, FL. Agent—Jennifer Jackson, Donald Maas Literary Agency, 160 W. 95th St., Ste. 1B. New York, NY 10025. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Mystery writer.

WRITINGS:

The Young Widow (mystery), St. Martin's Minotaur (New York, NY), 2005.

Work appears in anthologies, including Murder Most Cozy, Signet (New York, NY). Contributor of short stories to mystery publications, including Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A second Bethancourt/Gibbons novel.

SIDELIGHTS: Mystery writer Cassandra Chan perfected her protagonists, independently wealthy English detective Phillip Bethancourt and Scotland Yard Detective Inspector Jack Gibbons, over the course of seventeen years of short stories published in mystery magazines. In the style of cozy British mysteries, her debut novel The Young Widow presents her sleuthing duo to a wider audience. Here Gibbons is assigned the poisoning case of wealthy Geoffrey Berowne, and Bethancourt, his friend from university days, helps him out. Suspicion initially falls on the victim's young widow, Annette, whose earlier husbands, also older than she, met similar ends. Gibbons becomes romantically involved with Annette and Bethancourt attempts to keep the investigation on course in this "sprightly debut," as a Publishers Weekly contributor described the book. A critic for Kirkus Reviews noted: "Chan's debut keeps you guessing until the end." Higher praise came from Library Journal contributor Rex E. Klett, who called the novel a "fascinating police procedural in the finest tradition," and from Best Reviews contributor, Harriet Klausner, who also found it "a fine English police procedural."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2005, review of The Young Widow, p. 261.

Library Journal, June 1, 2005, Rex E. Klett, review of The Young Widow, p. 104.

Publishers Weekly, June 20, 2005, review of The Young Widow, p. 60.

ONLINE

Best Reviews, http://www.bestreviews.com/ (September 11, 2005), Harriet Klausner, review of The Young Widow.

Cassandra Chan Home Page, http://home.att.net/∼c.chan (September 11, 2005).