With two books coming out on October 8th and 9th, E.J. Copperman’s characters (some written with Jeff Cohen) are very busy these days. We thought it’d be interesting to get two of them from separate books together on the eve of publication to see what they share, how they differ and what they make of each other. The resulting conversation is shown below, edited from the three hours of audio recorded.

Samuel Hoenig (The Question Of The Dead Mistress): We have never met before. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Samuel Hoenig, proprietor of Questions Answered.

Kay Powell (Bird, Bath, And Beyond): A pleasure to meet you. I’m Kay Powell, and I own Powell and Associates, a firm that handles theatrical bookings for animal actors.

SH: I am not certain I understand your business.

KP: That’s all right. Nobody does.

SH: You do not understand your own business?

KP: It was a joke. My business is very strange. Most agents work with human clients but all my actors are animals. I’ve worked with dogs, cats, ferrets, chimpanzees and once, a horse named Irving. But I’d like to ask about Questions Answered. Is that what it sounds like it would be?

SH: Yes. I rent a small storefront, a former pizzeria, and clients come in to ask questions. If I find the question interesting, I will agree to research and answer it for a fee.

KP: Can’t anybody just Google whatever they want to know? I mean, I don’t want to belittle your business; I just don’t understand.

SH: The questions I answer are not easily researched. They often require a knowledge of physics, history, forensics, zoology or a combination of those and other disciplines. For example, I will not answer a question that is easily answered, like, “Who was the American League Rookie of the Year in 1970?” It was Thurman Munson of the New York Yankees. Anyone can find that answer with very little effort.

KP: But you’re not a detective agency?

SH: Was that a question?

KP: Yes.

SH: It is sometimes difficult for me to determine if something is a question when the speaker does not phrase it properly. I have a set of personality traits that some would say indicate a person with an autism spectrum disorder.

KP: I was wondering. But yes, I was asking if Questions Answered is a detective agency, and I gathered it is not.

SH: That is correct. We are not a detective agency, although we have had a hand in solving some crimes. That is not the thrust of the business. May I ask why you work exclusively with animal clients?

KP: Well, I grew up with two actors for parents and have gotten a little, let’s say impatient with people. I find that animals are a lot easier to deal with. They almost never have temper tantrums and they usually just want a good scratch behind the ears.

SH: I can understand that. Dealing with my clients is sometimes a trial for me because I do not have a common interest with most people I meet. Their behavior often seems irrational and emotionally random. I deal best with those things that can be proven.

KP: I get what you’re saying. Recently I had a client named Barney who is a parrot. And after he was in the trailer of a human actor who was shot and killed, even the police thought he could just tell them who the killer was. Parrots, of course, don’t converse; they just repeat back what they’ve been trained to say. But the humans’ behavior was really sort of weird to me.

SH: Yes, people can react strangely. One of my most recent questions involved a woman who, given evidence that her husband was cheating on his marriage vows, came to the conclusion that he was in love with his college girlfriend, who had been dead for three years. It was, of course, completely irrational but she would not concede the point. My associate Ms. Washburn was compelled to investigate the situation, and things did not turn out very well.

KP: You have to shake your head sometimes.

SH: Why?

KP: It’s an expression.

SH: Ah. I have one last question for you: What is your favorite Beatles song?

KP: I suppose it should be Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey, but it’s actually Martha My Dear because it’s about Paul McCartney’s sheepdog.

SH: Interesting.

You can read more about Samuel Hoenig in The Question Of The Dead Mistress, the fifth book in the “Asperger’s Mysteries” and Kay Powell in Bird, Bath, And Beyond, the second book in the “Agent to the Paws Mysteries.”

“Is my husband having an affair with a dead woman?”

For Samuel Hoenig, the proprietor of a unique agency called Questions Answered, the answer to this most recent question is simple. Since there’s absolutely no evidence that apparitions exist, it would be impossible for Ginny Fontaine’s husband to be having an affair with one.

But Samuel’s associate, Janet Washburn, isn’t so easily convinced.

Wrestling with his complicated feelings for Ms. Washburn, Samuel proposes that she take the lead on the question. As soon as her research begins, the husband in question ends up dead, leaving Janet and Samuel wondering if they stand a ghost of a chance at unraveling this twisted tale of danger and deceit.

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Kay Powell, theatrical agent to non-human animals, is babysitting―that is, birdsitting―her client, a parrot named Barney, on the set of his new TV show, Dead City. When the show’s charismatic star is shot in his trailer between scenes, the only eyewitness to the crime is―you guessed it―Barney. And even though Kay keeps explaining that even a “talking” parrot doesn’t actually converse with people, the investigators insist on interrogating the bird for information he clearly can’t communicate.

Suspects accumulate like birdseed, and before long it’s clear the killer believes Barney might actually be able to supply useful evidence. Even Barney can’t fly away from this one.

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About the author
E.J. Copperman is the author of the Haunted Guesthouse series, the Mysterious Detective series (Edited Out), the Agent to the Paws series (Bird, Bath, And Beyond) and with Jeff Cohen, the Asperger’s Mystery series (The Question Of The Dead Mistress). You can find E.J. at www.ejcopperman.com and Jeff Cohen at www.jeffcohenbooks.com.

All comments are welcomed.