Hailey Lind Books In Order

Publication Order of Art Lover's Mystery Books

Hailey Lind is the pen name for two writing sisters Carolyn and Juliet Blackwell that write thriller and mystery fiction. Juliet is an artist who lives in Oakland California while her sister is a historian from Norfolk, Virginia. They used the name Hailey Lind since they needed to write a novel that has a single voice. It means that their audience never knows that the novels have been written by two authors. Nonetheless, interacting with readers and booksellers is often interesting with some people disappointed and others intrigued to meet them. However, two authors writing as one under a pseudonym is not a new one as they borrowed from the wife and husband team of Nero Blanc, mother and daughter authors PJ Tracy and the sisters PJ Parrish. Since they live on opposite coasts, they usually make use of email to communicate when they are writing their novels. Their process usually involves one of the sisters writing one chapter and then sending it to the other to revise and then the revised version is revised once again until both parties are satisfied. Every fortnight, they get on the phone and hash out character and plot details for several hours. Carolyn is usually in charge of fact-checking and research and Julie usually does the art.

Hailey Lind is someone that had always been in Julie and Carolyn’s lives for nearly a decade before they came together and started writing. One of their favorite pastimes is to go on long road trips. During these road trips, they would usually battle out on who had the best story ideas and they found it a lot of fun. After several years jousting with each other, they finally decided to write down their ideas and realized that it was not as easy as they believed it would be. They had grown up in a home full of books and they had all the encouragement from their parents who nurtured their creative and innovative brains by providing all manner of reading material. As children, they would read different types of books but as they grew older, they gravitated toward mystery fiction works. They particularly loved the works of Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters, who combined to write under the pseudonym, Barbara Mertz. They still love the novels and find them an inspiration for their realistic characters and intelligent writing. But neither of the sisters believed they would one day write a novel until they completed the manuscript for “Feint of Art” their debut novel in 2014. Hailey Lind has said that it took both of them maturity to finally say “now or never” and finally do what they had been planning to do for years.

Julie has been working in the art field for several years which has given her a lot of knowledge about the local art scene and inspiration for many of their stories. In addition to that, she is a subscriber to several internet services where she has gleaned some wacky and wild information about the world of art crime and art in general. Many of the stories in their debut novel in the “Art Lover’s Mystery” series, “Feint of Art” in addition to “Brush with Death” and “Shooting Gallery” have been inspired by real stories she read in newspaper tales. According to Carolyn, the idea for their debut novel came from the fact that they wrote a story based on what they knew. Since they are both academics, they got their stories from history and anthropology even though their academic credentials did not play a significant role in preparing them for the rough and tumble of fiction writing. They spent several months writing and rewriting their manuscript and hence it was a learning process for both authors that culminated in one of the most popular novels to be released in 2014.

Hailey Lind’s “Feint of Art,” the first novel of the “Art Lover’s Mystery” series is the story of Annie Kincaid. During her teen years, she had been working for her grandfather in Europe, a man who made some of the best forgeries of artistic masterpieces. But then she had a run-in with the authorities and decided to quit the life of crime. She no longer has as much money as she did working for a criminal enterprise, as she works in San Francisco for a completely legal faux finishing company. However, she still has a lot of knowledge of the going-on in the forgery business and what had happened in Europe might come back to haunt her. Annie is soon entangled in a murder mystery when the curator of the Brock Museum who happens to be her boyfriend asks for her help in determining the authenticity of a new Caravaggio painting. Annie immediately knows that it is a forgery since it was her grandfather that had painted it. The very same night, a janitor in the museum is killed and her ex goes missing. Additionally, a stranger approaches Annie asking if she can help track down an expensive painting done by a Great that had been stolen and then forged.

“Shooting Gallery,” the second novel of the “An Art Lover’s Mystery” series by Hailey Lind has Annie as the owner of a successful faux finishing business. But even though what she does now is completely legit she still has to fight her inner demons given that she is the granddaughter of the most wanted forger in the world. She always hears and reads news of her father involved in grand art theft schemes and she cannot help but hear an inner voice telling her to get back in the game. Somehow, she often finds herself in the right places where she can listen to her inner demon. At the opening of the novel, she is attending a fashionable art gallery that just opened, when she sees a body hanging from a tree just outside the hall. Soon after the discovery, there is a major commotion as the nearby museum has reported a theft. Annie is even more puzzled when her mother arrives in town saying that she is going to the funeral of the man that had been found hanging. It is bizarre since she does not say why she would go except that he had been her classmate at Berkley. She wants Annie to not interfere which is a huge red flag to Annie and as such she jumps right in to investigate.

Hailey Lind’s “Brush with Death” opens to Annie Kincaid working a very important project. She had been contracted by the Chapel of the Chimes Columbarium to restore some valuable artworks. Since the chapel is close to the Bayview Cemetery, her employers have requested that she work during the night to give the mourners who visit the spot during the day some peace. One night, she meets Cindy Tanaka, a young graduate student who is busy researching public grieving phenomena for her dissertation. While she converses with the student at an old crypt, they are dazed when a masked man dashes out of the crypt nearly knocking them over. Regaining her balance, Cindy chases down the man and tackles him though he manages to get away but not before he dropped a small box he got from the crypt. When the student discovers that Cindy is restorer, she asks if a beautiful piece in the chapel is authentic and Annie promises to check it out. The request results in another thrilling adventure for Annie as she finds another mysterious body, is nearly killed by masked men, Kisses Frank DeBenton, restores her friendship with Annette Crawford the detective, and overall leaves a trail of chaos in her wake trying to resolve a bizarre mystery.