Murder most patient.
Crime-novel success at 60 and up.
To all of you with late-life literary ambitions, to all of you who've collected enough rejection slips to paper a room, we bring today tidings of great joy in the person of Robin Hathaway. Hathaway, who splits her days between Philadelphia and New York, didn't begin writing until she was 50. For 10 years, everything she wrote was rejected. Her first novel was accepted and published when she was 60. In the spring, St. Martin's Press will publish Sleight of Hand, Hathaway's eighth mystery, which, like most of her other novels, is set in Philadelphia. Along the way, she has attracted devoted readers and won two prestigious awards. At 73, she brims with new literary projects and a zest for life that's as palpable as it is enviable.
Her advice to struggling authors: "You can't take it personally. You can't think it's because of your work. It's a matter of taste and luck and whether you hit somebody at the right time. You have to keep on going. You can't give up, and it's never too late to start."
Hathaway is her maiden name and pen name. Her legal name is Robin Keisman. Her husband, Robert Keisman, is also her muse and the inspiration for Dr. Andrew Fenimore. Hathaway calls Fenimore, the protagonist of her first series of mysteries, her husband's clone.
Like Keisman, Fenimore is a cardiologist. "He believes in solo practice and spending time with patients and the art of medicine," Hathaway says. "He's kind, intellectual, a low-key kind of sleuth." And in five novels, he keeps happening upon murdered corpses and methodically assembling clues to figure out whodunit and how.
"I always thought diagnosing a disease was similar to working out a murder," Hathaway says. "You gather evidence and put it together and work out a solution."
Jack Kelly cameo
The fictional Fenimore lives on Spruce Street in Center City; his adventures are steeped in local lore. The Doctor Rocks the Boat, for instance, takes place on Boathouse Row and features a cameo appearance by the famed oarsman Jack Kelly, Princess Grace's brother. (In real life, Robert Keisman was greeted by Jack Kelly when, out of curiosity, Kesiman knocked on the Vesper Boat Club door. After a short tour, Kelly invited Keisman, then a resident at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, to join for a nominal fee.)
Hathaway was born and grew up in Germantown and was educated at Germantown Friends School. Her parents were artists. Her father, John Hathaway, won awards at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and distinction for his skill with stained glass.
Robin Hathaway majored in English at Smith College, where she took a short-story class taught by Alfred Kazin, the literary critic and cultural historian. One of her fellow pupils was Sylvia Plath.
After college, she lived in an apartment at 13th and Pine Streets and busied herself taking photographs of derelict buildings in what was then rundown Society Hill and preparing to write the Great American Novel.
"I wrote really depressing short stories. I would give them to guys to read and wonder why they never came back," she said and laughed. Only one swain did - Robert Keisman. Recalls Hathaway: "He said to me, 'Why don't you write something more cheerful?' "
The couple married and moved to the rural reaches of western Delaware County, where they rented a tenant farmhouse and Robin reared their two daughters while running a graphic arts business.
Getting started
When Hathaway turned 50, her husband admonished her: "You always wanted to write. Don't you think it's time to get started?" In three years, Hathaway produced three novels. Here the story becomes predictable. She sent the manuscripts to publisher after publisher. Rejection after rejection. At first they were pro forma, automatic. In time some came back with indications of actual human consideration, even an encouraging comment or two. Still, they were rejections.
After 10 years, Hathaway was ready to quit. One day, her older daughter, Julie, noticed an entry form for a mystery-writing contest sponsored by St. Martin's Press. She urged her mother to give it a try. "I thought, why not?" Hathaway recalls. "This will be my last thing." She submitted her entry and forgot about it.
Nine months later, a senior editor at St. Martin's called with some astonishing news: Hathaway's first mystery novel, The Doctor Digs a Grave, had won the Malice Domestic Award for best first traditional mystery (or "cozy" in the parlance of the mystery writer's trade, as in "tea cozy"). St. Martin's would publish the book and send her a $10,000 advance.
It gets better: A year later, the same book won a coveted Agatha from the Mystery Writers of America for best first novel. Among mystery novelists, an Agatha is equivalent to an Oscar.
Reviewers have praised Hathaway for her "easygoing, unpretentious touch" and her "smooth and entertaining blend of jargon-free medical lore, little-known historical facts and credible mystery plotting." In Mystery Scene Magazine, The Doctor Digs a Grave was hailed as "the perfect combination of the old and the new. The plot is as mysterious as old-fashioned mysteries but the telling is sleek and fashionable and right up to date."
"Her books have a sweet sense of humor," says Ruth Cavin, Hathaway's editor at St. Martin's. "She's very real, and her characters seem very real, the sort of nice people - and maybe not so nice people - you might like to meet. She brings them all to life."
Cavin describes Hathaway as "one of the most lovely persons I've come across in my work." Physically slight, quiet and shy, Hathaway gravitates toward the fringe of the crowd, unnoticed, Cavin says. There, she observes the human pageant, which she records with fond amusement and benign tolerance.
None of Hathaway's books has climbed the best-seller list, but they sell steadily to devoted readers and are in libraries all over the world. Her mysteries are published in Japan and Canada, and she's received appreciative e-mail messages from people in the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
In 2003, Hathaway launched a new suspense series with Scarecrow, which introduced Jo Banks, a glamorous but defrocked Manhattan pediatrician who seeks solace in South Jersey, specifically the area around Salem and Bridgeton. "It's in a time warp," Hathaway says. "It hasn't changed since 1930." There, Banks provides medical services at motels and makes house calls on a motorcycle.
"She's my alter ego," Hathaway says. "She does all the stuff I never had the nerve to do."
For the last 25 years, Hathaway and her husband have lived in Brewerytown, in one of several rowhouses once occupied by managers at a nearby defunct brewery. During the week, she's in New York, where, when it comes to mystery writing, "everything is going on." There, she does the bulk of her writing. She writes in longhand on a legal tablet between 8 a.m. and noon.
New York may be where the action is, but Philadelphia is where her heart resides. Hathaway spends her weekends here, and this is where she does most of her research. She loves exploring local history, and her research for each mystery typically fills several cardboard boxes and consumes at least a third of the time it takes to produce a book (usually about a year).
"Philadelphia has such a rich historical background," says Hathaway, who owns several early volumes of Philadelphia history. "A lot of things aren't generally known. There's no lack of material. It's just loaded."
Her next two mysteries in the Dr. Fenimore series will not disappoint readers seeking a local angle. The Doctor and the Dancing Bear is about gypsies and mystic monks along the Wissahickon, while The Doctor and 'Dem Golden Slippers' will involve, obviously, the Mummers.
Hathaway's fourth-quarter literary success has only fired her ambition. She has no intention of slowing down. Why would she? She's having too much fun.
"What I love about what I'm doing is that it's opened so many other doors," Hathaway says. "I always wanted to teach and now, thanks to this, I got over my stage fright."
The real joy, and occasional agony, remains the writing, doing what she always dreamed of doing as a new Smith graduate with visions of literary glory.
"When I write, I go into another world," Hathaway says. "My husband can tell if I'm working on a book because my voice sounds far away. Stuff comes to me that I don't consciously think about. When my imagination takes over, that's the best part, the happiest part."
To listen to an interview with the mystery writer, go to http://go.philly.com/robinhathaway
staff writer Art Carey acarey@phillynews.com and visit www.robinhathaway.com.
