Karen Keskinen is at work on a new book, The Diagnosis—a Mystery-Thriller set in Santa Teresa, a repressive city-state in the powerful California Coastal Consortium in the year 2056. She is the author of Blood Orange, Black Current, and Dragon Fruit, the three books in the Santa Barbara-based Jamie Zarlin mystery series.
Keskinen was born in Salinas and grew up around the corner from John Steinbeck’s childhood home. As a girl she spent countless hours exploring the Marina dunes on Monterey Bay, adjacent to her father’s strawberry farm. She has also lived in Wellington, New Zealand, and in California’s Northern San Joaquin Valley. She now resides in Santa Barbara—famously known as Santa Teresa in the inimitable mystery novels of Ross Macdonald and Sue Grafton.
“How do we choose to weave, unravel, and weave again the stories of our collective lives, selecting fibers of pain and joy? In future years, what strands will we use, which will we toss away, and at what cost? Will we honor life and protect it—life, the gift that enables all others—or will we kick it to the side of the road?”
Keskinen is the author of Blood Orange, Black Current, and Dragon Fruit, the three books in the Santa Barbara-based Jaymie Zarlin mystery series. A keen interest in people and their intertwined lives is a driving force in her work.
Keskinen was born in Salinas, California, and grew up around the block from John Steinbeck’s boyhood home. As a girl she spent countless hours exploring the Marina Dunes on Monterey Bay, adjacent to her father’s strawberry farm. She has also lived in Wellington, New Zealand, and in California’s Northern San Joaquin Valley. She now resides in Santa Barbara.
“I’m curious about how we choose to weave and reweave the stories of our lives, selecting fibers of pain and joy. What is used, what’s tossed away—and at what cost?”
About Jaymie Zarlin
Private Investigator Jaymie Zarlin and her assistant Gabi Gutierrez peel back the luscious skin of a California beach town to expose corruption and murder.
Zarlin, who prefers to work missing-person cases, finds herself pulled in to investigate a series of brutal homicides. As she struggles to help the most vulnerable, each case brings her a step closer to uncovering the truth about her own brother, who died years earlier in police custody. Through it all, Zarlin navigates sharp divides marked by race, money, gender and privilege in her seaside town.
“If a story is not about the hearer [s]he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.”
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)