Susan Kandel

Overview

Every page about Susan Kandel covers her as a novelist, but she spent her working life as an art historian and critic before she ever published fiction — and no book-list page quotes a single review she actually wrote. She holds a history degree from Williams College (1983) and an M.A. in art history from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, worked about seven years as an art critic for the Los Angeles Times, and later edited the art journal artext while teaching art history and theory at universities including UCLA. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) (https://hub.williams.edu/history/history-majors-past/1983-susan-kandel-author/) (https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/susan-kandel-880000029303) Then, in her early forties, she left the art world to write mysteries full-time — and the result was the five-book Cece Caruso series (2004–2009), whose sleuth is a biographer of dead mystery writers, a premise that put Kandel’s research training to work. (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/susan-kandel/) (https://www.Publishersweekly.Com/pw/print/20030324/33900-perry-mason-as-first-fiction.html) Her debut was nominated for the Agatha Award for best first novel, and the final book, Dial H for Hitchcock, was shortlisted for the 2010 Mary Higgins Clark Award. (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html) (https://www.bookreporter.com/features/awards/edgar-allan-poe-awards-2010)

Art critic and editor

Kandel was born October 31, 1961, in Los Angeles and grew up in an upper-middle-class Jewish home in Beverly Hills; she jokes that being born on Halloween “at the stroke of twelve” marked her early. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html) She married Peter Lunenfeld, a professor of media design, in 1991, and they have two daughters, Kyra and Maud. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) As an art professional she taught art history and theory at UCLA, the Art Center College of Design, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and also taught at New York University. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) (https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/susan-kandel-880000029303) She served as editor of artext, described by her publisher as an international journal. (https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/susan-kandel-880000029303)

A surviving example of her criticism shows what the art world got from her. Her September 3, 1992 Los Angeles Times review of “The Laura Show” at TRI Gallery — an exhibition of work by six emerging artists all named Laura — opens by skewering the gallery habit of grouping artists under “impressively strained ‘themes’” such as “French sculptors under 25 working with synthetic fibers,” then argues the show is “far less coy than the average group show” for openly admitting the arbitrariness of its curatorial premise. (https://m.lauracooperart.net/images/bio/1992_Laura Show_LA Times.pdf) The byline reads “SUSAN KANDEL | SPECIAL TO THE TIMES.” In 2003, when Publishers Weekly reported her book deal, it still introduced her as “art critic and editor,” noting she “has been a critic for the L.A. Times and more recently has edited the art journal artext.” (https://www.Publishersweekly.Com/pw/print/20030324/33900-perry-mason-as-first-fiction.html) The exact start and end dates of her Times tenure have not been pinned down from available sources.

The Cece Caruso mysteries

The series began on a family vacation in Ventura. Kandel and her husband noticed a bronze plaque marking the spot of Erle Stanley Gardner’s 1920s law office — the birthplace of Perry Mason — snuck upstairs, and found the office preserved as the prototype for Mason’s, “down to the hat rack.” The idea for a novel about a biographer of mystery writers clicked immediately. (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html)

She gave herself one year to write a novel after leaving her art-editor job with her husband’s backing; she queried three agents and signed with one within two weeks. (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html) The sale was reported in Publishers Weekly’s March 24, 2003 deal column: Morrow’s Carolyn Marino won the first novel at auction in a six-figure North American deal covering three books, with Coast agent Sandy Dijkstra handling the sale; the first book was titled I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason, and the second was announced under the working title Blue Nancy Drew — the book that would be published as Not a Girl Detective. (https://www.Publishersweekly.Com/pw/print/20030324/33900-perry-mason-as-first-fiction.html)

The novels appeared steadily: I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason (2004), Not a Girl Detective (2005), Shamus in the Green Room (2006), Christietown (2007), and Dial H for Hitchcock (2009). (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/author/susan-kandel/) The debut earned Kandel a nomination for the Agatha Award for best first novel — a fan-voted honor — and a warm reception: Library Journal called it “essential,” Marilyn Stasio praised the sleuth in the New York Times Book Review, and Kirkus gave it a thumbs up, while Publishers Weekly found the denouement “a bit over-the-top.” (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html) (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) (https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/susan-kandel/i-dreamed-i-married-perry-mason/) (https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-058105-3)

Each book pairs Cece — a vintage-fashion-loving biographer of dead mystery writers — with a different legend. Not a Girl Detective (2005) has Cece writing a biography of Carolyn Keene amid a murdered Nancy Drew memorabilia collector; Kandel built it around the painter Russell Tandy, the original Nancy Drew dust-jacket illustrator, doing some 90 percent of her research before writing a word. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html) Entertainment Weekly’s Tina Jordan wrote that “Nancy’s adventures were downright staid compared with Cece’s wild ones,” and School Library Journal praised the depth of its research. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) Shamus in the Green Room (2006) puts Cece on the set of Dash!, a film based on her Dashiell Hammett biography, with Rafe Simic cast as Hammett; PW called it “fun, stylish… sure to tickle Hammett fans,” and Kirkus praised the installment. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) Christietown (2007) sends Cece to a “Cotswaldsesque cozyland” housing development built by ex-circus huckster Ian Christie, who claims distant relation to Agatha Christie, while Cece plans her wedding to L.A. detective Peter Gambino and a baby shower for her pregnant daughter Annie. (http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780060883690) PW called it an “entertaining but thin fourth puzzler,” admiring how Kandel “deftly contrasts clever excerpts from Cece’s biographies with her personal dilemmas” but finding the mystery plot “contrived.” (http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780060883690) The finale, Dial H for Hitchcock (2009), opens after Cece has dumped Gambino and returned from her solo honeymoon; while researching a Hitchcock biography, she finds a stranger’s cellphone in her purse after a Vertigo screening and witnesses the phone’s owner, Anita Colby, being pushed off a cliff. (http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780061826672) PW gave it a starred review, calling the fifth mystery “a terrific tribute that’s also wickedly funny,” and in 2010 it was shortlisted for the Simon & Schuster–Mary Higgins Clark Award at the Edgars — S. J. Bolton’s Awakening won. (http://www.publishersweekly.com/9780061826672) (https://www.bookreporter.com/features/awards/edgar-allan-poe-awards-2010)

Method and discipline

Kandel has said books were her first love and art her second — art history was the career, and she never intended to return to literature. (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html) What she carried over was method: deep research first (the Christie book was built around Agatha Christie’s eleven-day disappearance in December 1926; the fifth began life under the working title VERTIGO-A-GO-GO), and a professional’s schedule — she treated writing as a forty-hour-a-week job and credited her journalistic experience for her respect for the deadline. (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html)

What this profile does not claim

• “Blue Nancy” was a working title, not a separate book. Publishers Weekly’s 2003 deal announcement lists the second book as “Blue Nancy Drew”; it was published in 2005 as Not a Girl Detective. (https://www.Publishersweekly.Com/pw/print/20030324/33900-perry-mason-as-first-fiction.html) Some reference bibliographies list “Blue Nancy” as its own 2005 title — that is a cataloging artifact of the working title, not a sixth book.
• The Mary Higgins Clark Award was a shortlist nomination, not a win. Dial H for Hitchcock appeared on the 2010 nominees list; the award went to Awakening by S. J. Bolton. (https://www.bookreporter.com/features/awards/edgar-allan-poe-awards-2010)
• The Agatha nomination was for best first novel (2004), the debut — she did not win it. (https://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/13-20questions.html)
• The exact dates of her Los Angeles Times art-critic tenure are not verified from available sources; reference entries say about seven years, ending before the 2003 book deal, and a September 1992 bylined review survives. (https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/kandel-susan-1961) (https://m.lauracooperart.net/images/bio/1992_Laura Show_LA Times.pdf)
• No fiction after 2009 is claimed. Available sources document five Cece Caruso novels ending with Dial H for Hitchcock; this profile does not assert any later books.
• This profile is about the art critic and novelist — not an unrelated same-named New Jersey nursery-school educator who died in 2016.