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David Fulmer's latest mystery is set in Philadelphia in 1961.

Blue Period

A new mystery novel pays homage to Philly.

by Tim Whitaker

“At 10:30 on the night of March 24, 1962,” begins the opening passage in The Blue Door, David Fulmer’s newly published mystery. “Eddie Cero walked out the back door of the Southside Boxing Club in Philadelphia with a bloody bandage over his eyebrow and $40 cash in his pocket.” Fulmer’s absorbing tale is of Philadelphia boxer turned private investigator Eddie Caro, who decides to find out on his own what happened to a popular soul singer in the city who disappeared without a trace. Caro gets involved with the singer’s secretive sexy sister, and his story quickly turns alternately violent and passionate, all against a vivid Philadelphia backdrop. Fulmer, who has previously written mysteries based in New Orleans and Atlanta (where he now resides), says he may author more mysteries based in Philadelphia in the future.

How did this story come to you?
“Growing up there was this guy in my hometown who left for Philly to become a club fighter. He was just so bad. The way he walked, the way he moved. He had presence. He was a character that just stayed with me. The first scene in the book, where he’s coming out of the club, was just dictated to me from somewhere. I have no idea where. I don’t plot my books out like a lot of mystery writers. I start with a location, which in this case was Philadelphia in the early ’60s, and of course characters.”

So you didn’t grow up in Philadelphia?
“I’m from a small town of about 4,000 in the Susquehanna Valley. We lived some 100 miles outside of Philadelphia. As a kid my family would go to the shore in the summer and we’d get ice cream in South Philadelphia. I had an uncle who lived in Chester, so we would visit him. Philly was our big-city reference point. My sister was hooked on Bandstand and the music.”

How did you develop the characters for The Blue Door?
“If I can build strong characters, multidimensional and deep, and put them in the right place, the story will take care of itself. I know things will be figured out even though I don’t know how the story will end. Johnny, the singer who mysteriously disappears in The Blue Door, is based somewhat on the singer Sam Cooke—Sam Cooke was the first person of that era to start his own record label. So Johnny is based on singers, and there were a lot of them, who came up from nothing and became straight shooting stars. I’ve always been intrigued by talents like Sam Cooke.”

Fulmer says he had crushes on a number of soul singers growing up, including Philly's own Dee Dee Sharp.

Valerie is your lead female character.
“Right. She’s Johnny’s sister, and she’s a singer too. She was kind of based on the lead singer of the Platters who ended up marrying Frankie Lyman and was later played by Halle Berry in a movie. As a kid I had crushes on all the soul singers of that time—Dee Dee Sharp, Martha Reeves. We were in the Philly orbit. I was really influenced by Philly music and the artists who sang the music.”

Why did you set this story in Philly?
“For me, that’s where this story lived. It gets back to that boxer in my hometown. Publishers always want books based in New York. But I always saw this book being about Philly. If I couldn’t locate it in Philly, then I wouldn’t have done it. In South Philly, in particular, where Eddie hangs out, there’s this melange of race, like in New Orleans, where races and cultures mingle. I have a soft spot in my heart for South Philly.”

So many mysteries seem to become part homage to locations.
“I never intended to be a mystery writer. It’s a genre with more junk writing than maybe any other genre. On top of that, it gets put down a lot by an Ivy League ethos that says only a literary novel deserves our attention. But mysteries have some of the best writing anywhere. It’s one of the reasons I’m attracted to it.”

You clearly care greatly for the music of the era.
“It was a great era of soul music, the early ’60s, and when the British invasion came along it all went away. That was a shame because a lot of great R&B songs got covered by the Brits, who knew how good it was. And a lot of really good R&B songs got nipped in the bud because the sound just didn’t matter anymore. I like to think this book will remind people of this great music, and that a lot of it was made in Philadelphia. Most people outside of Philly don’t know what a cool place the city was—and is. When and if I move from Atlanta, I hope it’ll be to Philadelphia.”