Sarajane Avidon says she never read a mystery until after her daughter was born in 1972. “The neighbor asked me over for peach ice cream and I couldn’t go. I started crying because I was stuck in the house,” she recalls. “She gave me a Dorothy Sayers mystery to distract me.”
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Both made their homes in Chicago. Avidon pursued her stage career, finding work in commercials, movies, and the theater. She was part of an ensemble that won a Jeff Award for a production of Under Milk Wood in 1975. Sussman went on to become a successful author with books like The Dieter and the children’s story There’s No Such Thing as a Chanukah Bush, Sandy Goldstein.
“It was wonderful for me, that I had a project,” says Avidon. “I never got up off the couch except for lunch with Sue.”
The pair are working on a second book in which Taylor gets a job on a cruise ship. There’s plenty of material in the acting life to mine, says Avidon: “Voice-overs, TV, movies, Stratford. Then we could start over, or maybe even put her in a musical.”
