War Against Miss Winter (Haines)

The War Against Miss Winter (Rose Winter Series #1)
Kathryn Miller Haines, 2007
HarperCollins
317 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061139789

Summary
It's 1943, and the war escalating in Europe and the Pacific seems far away. But for aspiring actress Rosie Winter, the war feels as if it were right in New York City—what with food rationing and frequent blackouts...and a boyfriend she hasn't heard word one from since he enlisted in the navy. Now her rent is coming due and she hasn't been cast in anything for six months. The factories are desperate for women workers, but Rosie the Thespian isn't about to become Rosie the Riveter, so she grabs a part-time job at a seamy, lowbrow detective agency instead.

However, there's more to the Big City gumshoe game than chasing lowlife cheating spouses. When her boss turns up dead, Rosie finds herself caught up in a ticklish high society mystery, mingling with mobsters and searching for a notorious missing script. Maybe she has no crime-fighting experience—but Rosie certainly knows how to act the role. No matter how the war against Miss Winter turns out, it's not going to end with her surrender!

Evocative, entertaining, and wonderfully original, Kathryn Miller Haines's War Against Miss Winter introduces not only an unforgettable new sleuth but also an exciting new voice in the mystery genre, with a fast-paced tale of murder and deception that brings the World War II era vividly to life. (From the publisher.)

---

Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Reared—in San Antonio, Texas, USA
• Education—B.A., Trinity University; M.F.A, University of
   Pittsburgh
• Currently—lives in Western Pennsylvania

Kathryn Miller Haines is an actor, mystery writer, award-winning playwright, and artistic director of a Pittsburgh-based theater company. She grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and received her BA in English and Theatre from Trinity University in San Antonio and her MFA in English from the University of Pittsburgh. She's a member of the Mary Roberts Rinehart Chapter of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. She lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband, Garrett, and their three dogs.

Haines has always been fascinated by World War II, in particular how women's lives changed during the war. She thought the inherent combustibility of being a nation at war would be an interesting backdrop for Rosie's own dramas.

New York was a natural choice for the setting. It was important for Rosie to be part of a vibrant theatre world in a city where one could, logically, support themselves financially as an actor. It also needed to be someplace where there would be a connection with military activity, either because it was a destination point for soldiers on leave or because it was situated near a base.

Haines read countless books about life on the home front, poured through hundreds of articles in the New York Times during 1942 and 1943 to find out what was going on theatrically and what information about the war someone at home would legitimately have access to. She listened to old time radio shows and popular music from the period; read novels and periodicals published during the time; viewed dozens of movies set during the period; and examined photographs and maps of New York during the war.

In an interview on the publisher's website, Haines was asked to what extent she based the camaraderie and competition of her fictional actors on her own theatrical experiences. Many of her characters, she said, were created with types of people "one is always bound to encounter in the theatre world.... I've worked with megalomaniacal directors, with writers who thought every word they wrote was a gift, and with actors who honestly couldn't understand why the director had bothered to cast anyone else when their own talents were more than sufficient to fill the stage. But I've also worked with some of the most humble, creative, talented, giving people you could hope to encounter. They're the reason why I still adore performing to this day." (From the author's website.)

---

Book Reviews
Rosie Winter is master of the cool quip and cocky comeback—trademarks of the "hard-boiled" detective genre of the 1920's and '30's. Conjure up an image of Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, correct for gender by tossing in Rosalind Russell from His Girl Friday, and you've got Rosie.
A LitLovers LitPick (Sept. '07)

Set in New York City, Haines's assured debut brings the WWII era to vivid life, from a topical jump-rope song ("Whistle while you work. Hitler is a jerk...") to Automats and jive joints. On New Year's Eve 1942, actress Rosie Winter, whose day job is with a Manhattan detective agency, finds the body of her boss, Sam McCain, hanging in his office closet, his hands and neck tied with phone cord. The investigating cop calls Sam's death a well-deserved suicide, but there's a missing play that a reclusive playwright and a rich widow want found. Rosie, a fast-thinking Hepburn type, takes on the case, aided by her best pal, Jayne ("a petite blonde with... the voice of a two-year-old" dubbed "America's squeakheart"). This is a fun romp, though the author, herself a playwright and actor, provides some dark commentary on avant-garde theater and war as well as an unexpected and wicked twist in the novel's final act.
Publishers Weekly

Backstage bitchery during WWII. Now that out-of-work actress Rosie Winter has been hired as a shamus's gofer to pay her rent at a women's theatrical boarding house, she's in the perfect position to discover her boss's dead body swinging from a cord in the office closet. Did one of the clients Jim McCain was so secretive about prefer murder to bill-paying? Jim's unloving wife Eloise and stepson Edgar seem less interested in grieving than finding a script for an unproduced play by Raymond Fielding. Then a man calling himself Fielding hires Rosie to find the script first. When Jim's files disappear from his office, the suspects include a rival playwright, an ambitious director, a self-promoting actress who lies better than she acts and a couple of goons who may be under the auspices of gangster Tony B. More. Meanwhile, Rosie, hired for the opening at the People's Theatre, ends up joining Jayne and Tony's minion Al in reworking Fielding's play, which they stage amidst posters exhorting everyone to do their part for the war effort. Newcomer Haines, artistic director of a regional-theater company, knowingly describes thespian combativeness and audition politics. And she may have created the most annoying feline in fiction. But her real success is her pitch-perfect rendering of the early '40s, from rationing to java stops at the automat.
Kirkus Reviews

---

Discussion Questions
1. How would you characterize Rosie Winter's relationship with her boss, Jim McCain? Why does Jim hire someone to keep an eye on her?

2. Based on the author's depictions of Jayne, Rosie, and Ruby, how would you describe the typical life of a struggling young actor in New York City in the 1940s?

3. Why does Peter Sherwood seek out Rosie to audition for the play he is directing, and how sincere are his feelings for her?

4. How does Ruby Priest's involvement with the McCain family complicate Rosie's relationship with her at Shaw House and in their shared experiences in rehearsing the play, In the Dark?

5. How does Jack's absence from her life affect Rosie, and why does she refuse to correspond with him while they are separated from one another?

6. How does World War II contribute to the atmosphere of this novel, and why does it work especially well in the context of the mystery genre?

7. Why does Jayne lie to Rosie about who was responsible for her physical assault, and what does her decision to deceive Rosie reveal about the true nature of their friendship?

8. How does Churchill the cat play a role in Rosie's learning the truth about Raymond Fielding's missing play?

9. To what extent were you surprised by the revelations about Raymond Fielding? Whom did you suspect in the murders of Jim McCain and Edgar Fielding?

10. How did the cumulative effects of mystery and intrigue in the novel affect your reading experience? What was your favorite moment of suspense?

11. Why do you think Rosie feels torn about being an actor during a time of war?

12. How does Haines recreate the feel of the1940s?

13. Do you think Haines' background as an actor and playwright increased the sense of authenticity in the story?

14. Despite the fact that both Al and Tony are involved in the mob, both appear to be "good guys." How does their involvement in organized crime color your opinion about them?

15. Although Tony is vindicated, do you think he's an appropriate match for Jayne?

16. We tend to think of World War II as being the good war, yet that wasn't necessarily the perception of those who were living through the experience, especially prior to widespread knowledge about the various atrocities being committed by the Axis nations. What surprised you most about life on the homefront? Did your own knowledge about the outcome of the war color the way you perceived Rosie's complaining?
(Questions issued by publisher.)

top of page