First Chance
Chance Book 1
Kasey Lansdale
Blackstone Publishing
September 2026
First Chance by Kasey Lansdale is her debut novel. People might recognize the last name because her dad, Joe R. Lansdale, was a writer with the long-running Hap & Leonard series. Just as with her father’s series, this series has the main character Chance Kirby part of the found-family over the course of the books that includes her German Shepherd, foster sister, and the Police Chief.
Chance has decided to follow in her father’s footsteps and has opened her own private investigation firm. Her first big case has her investigating an ongoing serial killer. As she gets close to finding the killer she, her foster child, Tia, her best friend Police Chief, Izzy, Chance’s dog, Sissy, and others have their life threatened.
This novel is character driven. There are strong, well-defined and memorable characters.
Elise Cooper: Idea for the story?
Kasey Lansdale: Well, the story itself came from a lot of places. I mean, it’s something that is very close to me specifically: relationships with family, a found family with the dynamics of the main characters learning their place in the world. I think it was a way of working through what I was going through as a human being and putting it on paper and doing it under the framework of a crime story because that’s what I enjoy reading and watching and sort of what I gravitate to.
EC: Do you want to discuss the personal comparison?
KL: It’s personal because I come from a literary family. I grew up in that environment where people were creating. My father has been a professional novelist for over 50 years. My mother was an editor, and managed the business. So, I certainly come by it naturally for better or worse. It was a love letter to them, for the work that they have done and for all that they did to put a nice life together and doing it through this creative field. So that was part of it, sort of my effort at a hat tip. But it turns out that my first novel and what I hope to be a series came out a month before the last novel in my father’s 40 year run series. So, it’s a little bit of a baton handoff, and just the feeling of picking up where your family started and trying to do everything that they did and make sure that their legacy continues. I put that in the character Chance. She’s trying to find her way and opens this detective agency, but this is all new to her. She’s in her mid-20s and trying to find her path, but she’s still trying to honor those that came before her, even if those relationships are tricky.
EC: How would you describe Chance?
KL: They say she’s a lot like her dad. She’s direct, independent, reunited with her dad later in life, a little paranoid, and lives in her father’s shadow. She feels disappointed by her mother. I think it’s a broader thing than just the neglect. I think it’s just a deep, inability to understand how someone doesn’t do for their family, even under very difficult circumstances.
EC: How about the victim?
KL: The funny thing is, the story really to me is less about the victim. But I really focus less on the victim and more on the characters and their growth and their journey. I mean, the victim is another young girl who’s murdered, just the same story that if you turned on the news right now, you would see. And I think in a way, there’s a callousness that we have developed because, another shooting or, another murdered dead girl. And I think I wanted to portray that. How, obviously we care about the victim at a human level in most cases, but, then move on and go to the next thing. And I didn’t want that to be the takeaway. I wanted it to be that even though we didn’t know the victim, and in a way, she’s sort of a generic, blue-eyed, blond-haired victim, the kind you would normally see on the news. That the people who, in many ways, have the most reason to turn away, they’re the ones that really push forward to try to solve this case.
EC: What about the killer?
KL: He is a male. And may not be smart in the general use of the word, but he’s crafty. There’s nothing special about him. He wouldn’t be noticed in a crowd. He works at a profession that’s not suspicious or unexpected. The more he comes under inspection, the more observers can notice he doesn’t quite fit in. A square peg in a round hole. I think that the point of that was anytime you see sort of a profile on an FBI agent or any kind of thing, it’s a generic profile. I think that sort of generic thing that happens when you read or watch those crime shows that report it’s probably a white male between 30 and 50 and blah, blah, blah, you know. To me, all of that was the minor detail, the killer, the victim, and it really was the relationship between the characters, and those were the pieces that drove that story forward, if that makes any sense.
EC: What was the role of the dogs?
KL: I wanted to take a P.I. trope of a lonely man smoking a cigar and drinking a whiskey behind the frosted glass and, the author needs some way for the character to eulogize. So, he talks to the dog, and I wanted to sort of take that trope of PI fiction and turn it on its head. I wanted the dog to be a character unto itself, not just a sounding board, not just a device. I love dogs. I’ve always had dogs and I thought this was something that, in its own way, there’s a tone, especially in the South, there seems to be this undercurrent of people who don’t take care of their dogs in the same way that they might in other locations. And I also wanted to sort of make the comparison of the throw away dogs versus the throw away women.
EC: You want to expand on that?
KL: As my friends have started to read the book, I have gotten more messages about Sissy the dog and her well-being overall, then I’ve gotten about a single victim in the story. And while I don’t want anything to happen to animals, there seems to be such an upset of, ‘oh, don’t hurt the animal.’ What about all the dead women? We don’t seem to be as affected by that? Is that not as upsetting? And, you know, I find that upsetting. The fact that, I mean, I don’t want anything to happen to an animal. I love animals, but how come that seems to be the thing that bothers everybody the most and I find that upsetting? I’m furious about those things as well, but I’m also furious about how we treat each other as humans and how we discard certain people in our society, and I think that was the larger message.
EC: How would you describe Izzy, the police chief?
KL: In many ways, she’s a combination of my cousin who’s a retired homicide detective, and my best friend. And, all of the pieces of them that are nurturing and maternal and wise and learned, and I think all of those things that I strive and hope to be. And someone who, even when she sees the worst of the worst and she gets older, she doesn’t completely lose her compassion. And I think that’s what Izzy does so well is she deals with the scum of the earth. And she hasn’t lost her ability to remember that they’re human, even at their worst. And that doesn’t mean she gives it a pass, it just means that she acknowledges that these are people who, in some cases, were set up for failure from the start. And that’s not an excuse, but it’s a reminder that some of us get certain opportunities in life that others don’t, and we should use those opportunities accordingly. I think Izzy also isn’t your typical police chief because she kind of looks the other way a lot. I think a lot of that has to do with being in a small town. I mean if this had taken place in a larger city, a lot of the things wouldn’t have been able to occur. The town is sort of like an Andy Griffith style, but with a lot more murder. And there are things that, wouldn’t have gotten away in that TV show, for example, or that storyline, but there was something cute about it and sweet about it because everybody knew everybody and knew where they were coming from, even when, what they did wasn’t always the best choice.
EC: Do you think many of the characters in the story was found family?
KL: Absolutely. I think it’s just people who choose to be there, choose to show up over again for the only reason that they want to. And I think there’s something nice about when you can find somebody who has no obligation and yet they continue to be there. And that’s really what you want in a family member. And that’s what those found family people have become.
EC: What about Tia, the foster child of Chance?
KL: Tia knows more of the way of the world than any other character in that book. She was probably exposed to the worst of everybody. And I don’t go too deep into her background because I don’t think that does anybody good. And I think it’s more about that she’s a child who has seen things that she shouldn’t have seen. And, that has made her the way she is. It has made her much more unable to filter herself, less worried about what people think, much more of a survivalist and in some ways a manipulator. But I think it also is the fact that she’s a child. And so those childlike instincts and those childlike moments shine through. It’s important because she’s really had some hard things happen to her, but at the heart of it, she is a child. Those images of young women, sometimes people forget they are children. And I wanted to sort of highlight that while still hitting the fact that she’s been through certain things that a lot of grown people will hopefully never have to experience. But she’s sassy and a risk taker. She knows that life can be taken in an instant, she has seen the hardest of things. But I think she knows what’s important, and I think she’s not going to let anybody bully her out of doing what she thinks is right.
EC: Next book?
KL: I’m about 60 pages into a Second Chance. I don’t really like talking too much in detail, but what I will say is this one is less procedural and more about the relationship of Tia and Chance.
THANK YOU!!
