Haines, Kathryn Miller 1971-

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Haines, Kathryn Miller 1971-

PERSONAL:

Born 1971; married; husband's name Garrett. Education: Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, B.A.; University of Pittsburgh, M.F.A., 1998.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Wilkinsburg, PA. Office—University of Pittsburgh, Center for American Music, Foster Hall Collection, Stephen Foster Memorial, 4301 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15260. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, actor, playwright, librarian, and educator. Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, associate director and librarian. Mystery's Most Wanted (a dinner-theater company), artistic director.

MEMBER:

Sisters in Crime (Mary Roberts Rinehart Chapter), Mystery Writers of America.

WRITINGS:

"ROSIE WINTER MYSTERY" SERIES

The War against Miss Winter, Harper Paperbacks (New York, NY), 2007.

Winter of Her Discontent, Harper Paperbacks (New York, NY), 2008.

SIDELIGHTS:

Kathryn Miller Haines is a Pittsburgh-based novelist, actor, and playwright. She is director of the Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also serves as librarian. She is artistic director for Mystery's Most Wanted, a five-person dinner theater company that has been in business for twelve years. She is a frequent performer in murder mysteries and other productions.

Now an accomplished professional in the mystery field, Haines was not always as confident in her ability to craft a compelling plot. "I was dreadful at plotting, and so I decided to start reading mysteries, a genre I knew depended on crisp, beautiful plots," she stated in a biography on the University of Pittsburgh, School of Arts & Sciences Web site. This self-education in the pages of whodunits helped her refine her skills enough to land a spot in the University of Pittsburgh's M.F.A. program, which admits only twenty-one students each year.

Haines's self-education and formal academic work led her toward becoming a mystery writer. Her first novel, The War against Miss Winter, is a historical work set in the homefront years of World War II. Rosie Winter is an actor in 1942 New York. With acting jobs difficult to find, Rosie takes a job as detective Jim McCain's assistant to make ends meet and keep her spot in a cozy theatrical boardinghouse. On arriving at work one morning, she is shocked to discover her boss's dead body dangling from a cord in the office closet. The police call it suicide, and even seem happy that McCain has been dispatched. However, Rosie knows better than to think the death a suicide—her boss's hands were securely tied together, leading her to suspect murder. With little time for grieving, Rosie soon finds herself involved in a case to find the missing manuscript of a play by a man named Raymond Fielding. Both Haines and his rich widow want the play found, but not for the same reason. With help from her friend Jayne, a performer who has parlayed her high-pitched voice into recognition as "America's Squeakheart," Rosie muddles through war reports, rationing, and the occasionally backstabbing nature of the theater business to hunt down the play and solve McCain's murder.

"The characters could have stepped right out of the screen of a classic black and white detective flick, complete with drama and slang," commented Sabrina Williams, writing on the Front Street Reviews Web site. With this novel, Haines's "real success is her pitch-perfect rendering of the early '40s, from rationing to java stops at the automat," observed a Kirkus Reviews critic. Weekly Standard reviewer Jon Breen had both praise and criticism for the novel, stating that "Haines is nearly note-perfect most of the way in capturing the home-front mood and lifestyle, but trips up on pronouns that are politically correct by current standards but off-base historically." However, a Publishers Weekly contributor concluded the novel an "assured debut" and a "fun romp" with an "unexpected and wicked twist in the novel's final act."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2007, review of The War against Miss Winter.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 29, 2007, Bob Hoover, "Three Pittsburgh-Area Women Score with Their First Novels," profile of Kathryn Miller Haines; September 16, 2007, Pohla Smith, "Period Details Helps World War II Mystery Ring True," review of The War against Miss Winter.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, May 6, 2007, "Newsmaker: Kathryn Miller Haines."

Publishers Weekly, April 23, 2007, review of The War against Miss Winter, p. 33.

Richmond Times-Dispatch, June 24, 2007, Jay Strafford, "Rosie's No Riveter, but Her Story Is," review of The War against Miss Winter.

Weekly Standard, September 10, 2007, Jon L. Breen, "Thrilled to Death; Three New Titles on the Crime Fiction List," review of The War against Miss Winter.