When Larry and Rosemary started writing together decades ago, they hadnโt even considered writing mysteriesโuntil they visยญited Rosemaryโs father, Dr. Saul K. Pollack, a prominent psychoยญanalyst in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That visit set them on a happy new course. Her father, a widower in his seventies, had a housekeeper/gourmet cook named Dorothy. She was sixty-three, with a beach ball figure, waddle walk, taffy-colored curls, and a good-natured, nosy-body personality. She had never gone past the tenth grade, but she was super-smart and keenly observant.
Dorothy also had a unique way of expressing herself. โI have to take my calcium so I donโt get osteoferocious.โ During the Mildsโ visit, Rosemaryโs father pulled out a piece of paper from his desk drawer and handed it to them: his secret list of Dorothyโs sayings. He thought they could submit it to Readerโs Digest. Back home in Severna Park, Maryland, they studied the list and decided, โForget Readerโs Digest, Dorothy belongs to us.โ They named her Molly. Dorothyโs frequent wittiยญcisms were โmalaprops,โ but the Milds named them Mollyprops. The concept of malaprops originated with the character Mrs. Malaprop in a 1775 comedy of manners, The Rivals, by Robert B. Sheridan.
When the first book in the series, Locks and Cream Cheese, was conceived, Rosemary and Larry envisioned their own alter ego characters, Simon and Rachel, as the protagonists. But Paco and Molly came across so powerfully that they soon edged their two alter ego characters into almost โpass-throughs.โ
Paco is modeled after a Barcelona, Spain, police inspector Larry met socially aboard a U.S. naval ship docked in that cityโs harbor. This short, fit, vibrant shipโs visitor wanted to practice his English. The inspector told Larry one impressive anecdote after another for an entire evening.
Molly found the inspector โkinda cute,โ though a bit underfed at five-foot-nine, perhaps 160 pounds sinking wet. He impressed her as a natty dresser, too: gray tweed jacket, leather loafers, sharply creased slacks, and yellow shirt with a gray bow tie. The temples of his horn-rimmed glasses pierced a full head of coarse salt and pepper hair with expressive brows to match. One or both of the brows would shoot north, expressing his current emotion. Molly was immediately struck by the inspector’s gaze as it leapt about his new surroundings in hyper fashion. Unnerving yet seductive. Nobody could lie to keen hazel eyes like that. He would be a man who could wheedle dark secrets from reluctant suspects.
Detective Paco LeSoto, a perennial bachelor, met Molly Mesta at the home of psychoanalyst Dr. Avi Kepple, where she worked as his housekeeper/gourmet cook. Soon after, she seduced Paco with her gourmet cooking and eagle-eyed smarts as he stalked villains. She became his sleuthing partnerโand much more. They fell in love and married.
Dr. Avi Kepple, the lovable psychoanalyst in Locks and Cream Cheese, is patterned after Rosemaryโs father, and Dorothy became our Molยญly. Rosemary and Larry honor their memories in their four Paco and Molly Mysteries: Locks and Cream Cheese, Hot Grudge Sunday, Boston Scream Pie, and The Moaning Lisa (brand-new).
Paco, now eighty-seven, and Molly, eighty-two, still relish stalking criminals, and Mollyโs antics continue, while tolerating the aches and pains of advanced age. Their endearing foibles resume in The Moaning Lisa in the year 1998.
Coauthors Rosemary and Larry Mild write cozy mysteries, adventure/thrillers, science fiction, short stories, articles, and essays. They actually manage the daily test of writing back to back in the same room. Rosemary is a career writer and editor. Larry is an electrical engineer turned writer. Both are members of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters In Crime, and Hawaii Fiction Writers.
