It is never too late to be what you might have been. George Eliot
Central to my identity as a writer is that I’m a serial late-bloomer. This pattern began when I was a teenager and decided to ignore conventional wisdom that dictated dancers had to begin training at a very young age. The result of my quixotic effort was a ten-year career onstage that defied the odds. Success as a dancer, of course, meant that I didn’t attend college until long after my peers got their degrees and began their grown-up lives. Luckily, the New York City public university system welcomes nontraditional students like me, and I graduated from Hunter College shortly before giving birth to my third child.
The habit of late starts didn’t end there. I was the oldest beginning teacher at my first job and didn’t publish my first book until the youngest of my six kids graduated high school. This personal history may explain why I love reading and writing stories about people who reinvent themselves. There are many examples of writers who find their voice later in life, but my favorite is Frank McCourt, who published Angela’s Ashes at 66 after spending much of his adult life as a high school teacher. As a former high school English teacher, the trajectory of his career has particular resonance for me.
Reinvention is a central theme in my books as well as my life. I write two mystery series and am in the process of writing a standalone thriller. Series often feature protagonists who deliver a comforting sameness. Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot investigate different crimes but those endeavors don’t materially change who they are. My characters, however, aren’t the same people at the end of the book as they are in the beginning.
The On Pointe series is set in a New York City ballet company and features a ballerina on the wrong side of thirty with two surgically reconstructed knees and an uncertain future. What I didn’t want was an ingenue who triumphantly overcomes obstacles and in the end, becomes a star. Leah is more complex than that. She defies expectations, both fictional and factual. Yes, she’s embroiled in a murder mystery, but the stakes are higher for her than they would be for someone at the start of her career. Those challenges make her observant, wary, and more than a little cynical. In other words, the perfect amateur sleuth.
The Master Class mysteries leap across the Hudson River to suburban New Jersey and feature an English teacher who also is at a crossroads in her life. Although this marks her as different from someone like Miss Marple, she does share that redoubtable amateur detective’s skill in analyzing personality, means, and motive. Miss Marple draws upon her experiences in the tiny town of St. Mary Mead but Liz Hopewell’s expertise is in literature. It’s her superpower, and she uses it to untangle mysteries when concrete, forensic evidence fails to provide answers. I love puzzles and had a lot of fun integrating clues from books into the narrative. Every chapter title includes a reference to a famous poem or book that might help the reader solve the mystery. Or, it could be a red herring. Teasing out truth from lies is at the heart of these books.
Work is central to the identity of both protagonists. It’s how they define themselves and how others define them. And yet, both rebel against those easy labels to forge an identity filled with the possibilities of what might be next.
Me too.
Study Guide for Murder: A Master Class Mystery
Murder has no place in Liz Hopewell’s perfect suburban life. She left her complicated past behind when she moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey, and she’s determined to forget the violence that shadowed her early years. As an English teacher, wife, and mother, Liz now confines her fascination with dark themes and complicated topics to classroom discussions about Frankenstein and Hamlet. But violence follows her from the mean streets of her childhood home to the manicured lawns of suburbia when Elliot Tumbleson’s head has an unfortunate and deadly encounter with a golf club. Her golf club.
A second murder, a case of mistaken identity, and a rollicking trip back to Brooklyn all point to one prime suspect in each crime. Liz embarks upon a double investigation of homicides past and present, using her gift for literary theory to unearth clues that she finds as compelling as forensic evidence. But the killers, like her students, don’t always read to the end.
Amazon Buy Link: Study Guide for Murder
Lori Robbins writes the On Pointe and Master Class mystery series and is a contributor to The Secret Ingredient: A Mystery Writers Cookbook. She won two Silver Falchions, the Indie Award for Best Mystery, and second place in the Daphne du Maurier Award for Mystery and Suspense. Her short stories include “Leading Ladies”which received an Honorable Mention in the 2022 Best American Mystery and Suspense anthology. A former dancer, Lori performed with Ballet Hispanico and the St. Louis Ballet, but it was her commercial work, for Pavlova Perfume and Macy’s, that paid the bills. After ten very lean years onstage she became an English teacher and now writes full-time.
Her experiences as a dancer, teacher, writer, and mother of six have made her an expert in the homicidal tendencies everyday life inspires.
You can find her at lorirobbins.com
https://linktr.ee/lorirobbinsmysteries
https://www.instagram.com/lorirobbinsmysteries/
https://www.facebook.com/lorirobbinsauthor/
https://twitter.com/lorirobbins99
Ladies of Mystery 
Thanks, Susan! One of the things I love about our crime fiction community is that it’s filled with people who channel earlier life experiences into their work.
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Hearing about the backgrounds of you and your books I’m intrigued.
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Like a lot of writers, I tend to lean in on what I know!
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As a late bloomer, myself, I can relate to your post. However, I am in awe of your accomplishments, especially as a mother of 6. The protagonist in my Alvarez series is a wannabe ballerina. The will is there, the talent is not. Mediocre is mediocre. But she perseveres, does a barre every morning, and dances for the sheer joy of it (while solving a murder or two). That stated, I can’t wait to check out your On Pointe series. Thanks so much for dropping by Ladies of Mystery.
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Just got the first Alvarez mystery and can’t wait to read! As for the dance part: I gave it up for twenty years before getting back into class. It’s like riding a bike–except the gears are rusty, the brakes are worn, and it’s a lot heavier to lift. But still fun!
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I’m a great believer in reinvesting yourself as you go through life. Your books sound terrific, just what I enjoy. Thanks for sharing your story.
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