Charlotte Van
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Charlotte Van
The Phaedra Chronicles
by Charlotte Van
"The Box" is the second book in the "Phaedra Chronicles" series, and follows main characters Phaedra McCaffrey and Tyler Powell as they navigate their new relationship and at the same time try to solve a mystery that arrives to Phaedra in an inheritance from a great-aunt.
New relationships can be a challenge, especially when one person wants to move forward, but the other wants to hold onto the status quo. That’s what Tyler told me our problem had become.
He was heading out on the 2-month long farewell tour for his metal band Eros, and I was left with no work from SIA, the investigations company I workfor, feeling seriously uncertain about my ongoing career as a PI.
Amidst all that, Ty and I had been having contentious episodes, which added to the anxiety over my future. I didn’t need him pushing me to make decisions I wasn’t ready to make. I dug in my heels…but so did he.
And then my brother Nick delivered a trunk that I’d inherited from my great aunt Mary - a trunk I’d never before bothered to open. It contained items from her time working for the OSS after World War 2 as part of the Monuments, Fine Arts & Archives Section G-5, going through a trove of items stolen by the Nazis in an effort to return those items to their rightful owners.
But the trunk contained a mystery that Aunt Mary had uncharacteristically stolen from the salt mine repository at Altaussee where she worked, and she’d left it to me, convinced that I would be able to solve that mystery, at the same time warning me of someone’s obsession with obtaining it by whatever means necessary. But decades after she’d taken it, who could possibly still be alive to
carry out their obsession?
That’s how I came to be in possession of the enigmatic copper box with a distinctive design on its top and no visible means of opening it. It was going to require all my investigative skills, my tenacity, and my dogged curiosity to solve the mystery of The Box.
But was I being unnecessarily paranoid, like Tyler was accusing me of, or was my gut instinct correct - that someone, so many years later, did indeed want that damned box desperately?
Well, that wasn’t going to stop me!
A San Francisco native, I pulled locations for these books from the experience of growing up in the Bay Area
I was fortunate enough to have been born in San Francisco at just the right time to be starting college when the whole Haight-Ashbury/Hippie thing began. While I was never deep into all that, I ended up married to a guy who was working in the music biz there as the music equivalent of back-of-house. As a result, as the saying goes, I got to see all the cool bands. That experience, coupled with learning a lot by osmosis about how the music business works from my husband’s subsequent years in the world, gave me the insight I’ve put into “The Phaedra Chronicles” stories. And my own years-long love of detective fiction and the “Thin Man” movies gave rise to making that love the inspiration for Phaedra’s choice of careers. Beyond “The Phaedra Chronicles” books, I have several projects in the works. One of them is a legacy project - the updating and editing of a fantastic manuscript written by my father back in the late 80’s and left to me when he passed - with a main character who is a tribal police chief as well as a powerful hereditary medicine man. I look forward to completing this project and publishing it before year’s end. Writing is what keeps me busy from day-to-day, and I love that I’m able to share what I’ve transferred from my head to the written page. Follow me here and on my Facebook author page (https://www.facebook.com/CMVan88) to see backstories, to keep up on what’s coming when, with maybe a few extra tidbits here and there. And I’d like to hear from you, too.
The Phaedra Chronicles
The Phaedra Chronicles are first person stories of the adventures of Phaedra McCaffrey, a young private investigator in San Francisco.
The books follow not only her investigating experiences, but also her personal love life with her first real client, rocker Tyler Powell. Two stubborn, headstrong people, their relationship alternates between passionate interplay and passionate arguments, creating friction neither of them quite knows how to handle.
While the first book, "The Spandex Murders", deals with, obviously, murder, the other two books, “The Box” and “The Road” deal with mysteries and situations that are much closer to home for Phaedra, and test her skills and emotions.
The Phaedra Chronicles
This third book in the Phaedra Chronicles series takes Phaedra, Tyler and his band on the road, launching his new musical project. All goes well until they run into an unscrupulous producer and Phaedra takes it upon herself, using her private investigation experience to take care of the situation.
Then the past rears its ugly head when Nick persuades her to go with him to see their dying mother, whom Phaedra has hated most of her life.
Back home, she and Ty have an argument and he leaves. How will they save their relationship?