Charlottesville Words

From the Backspace Newsletter:

Carolyn Hougan, former Backspace guest speaker and one half of the husband and wife writing team known as John Case, passed away Sunday, January 25, at University Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia, after a long and courageous battle with cancer. [Note: I think the date was actually February 25 -- see below.]

From the Washington Post obituary:

Carolyn Hougan, 63, a novelist who wrote under her own name as well as the pseudonym “John Case” for thrillers written with her husband, died of cancer Feb. 25 at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville.

Ms. Hougan wrote “Shooting in the Dark” (1984), “The Romeo Flag” (1989) and “Blood Relative” (1992). She teamed up with her writer-husband, Jim Hougan, to pen a series of thrillers of which the best known is “The Genesis Code” (1997), a bestseller about Vatican intrigue. Their latest novel, “Ghost Dancer” (2007), has been nominated for the Dashiell Hammett Award for the best literary crime novel.

Upon the reissue of her first novel, “Shooting in the Dark,” the Chicago Tribune said it was “shamefully neglected” and called it “a veritable Fabergé egg full of treasures and delights.” As the distaff half of John Case, she also co-wrote “The First Horseman” (1998), “The Syndrome” in 2001 (”an awfully dull name for a highly entertaining thriller,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said), “The Eighth Day” (2002) and “The Murder Artist” (2004)….

….The couple moved abroad, living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; Mykonos, Greece; and London. As a former researcher, photographer, cocktail waitress, school bus driver and at-home mother, she was aptly experienced to begin writing novels…..

….They lived in Alexandria and Washington from about 1980 until last August, when they moved full time to their home in Charlottesville. Ms. Hougan enjoyed gardening, sailing and spending summers in Phippsburg, Maine.