Random Saturday - Where did they go?

A few months ago, I said goodbye to Sharon McCone when I got the last book in the series. Yeah, that was a little premature because I had actually missed the book before that, but it was nice to end on that one now because I liked it better than the last one.
I also mentioned being sad when I read the last Discworld and Kinsey Millhone books after Terry Pratchett and Sue Grafton had died.

The other day it was time again to go through my books for a little purge. That's when I came upon the three books by Sandra West Prowell.

I got my first book by Sandra West Prowell at a fleamarket - not the first book in the series - and I was captured right away by her protagonist, the FBI agent turned private detective Phoebe Siegel living in Montana.
Phoebe comes from a Jewish-Catholic family, her father and one of her brothers were policemen.
Inheriting a lot of money from her aunt gives Phoebe the chance to buy an old house and to offer her services as a private detective at very reasonable fees. Feeling a connection to the victims is her main incentive.

The books are not Whodunits, they don't just tell the story of her cases, but also of problems within the family and of her relationships, but not in a way I find annoying. Of course that could have to do with there only being three books.
Character development is good, but it can also bring you down if for example the protagonist doesn't seem to have one happy moment in their life over I don't know how many books which has been a reason for me to abandon more than one series. Life can be depressing enough.

However, this is not supposed to be a review of Prowell's books, after all it's random Saturday.
I want to talk about why there are only three books. The last book had one of those short author introductions saying "... and is currently working on the fourth volume about detective Phoebe Siegel."
I was looking forward to that, to a new case and to see how her relationship with the Native American deputy would be coming along.
So every, now and then I looked her up, but the fourth novel never came, not even in English. Then I would forget about it again. I did that on and off for almost ten years wondering where Prowell had disappeared to, not obsessively, but usually when I put a book in my cabinet in a spot close to her books.
Weirdly enough, I can't remember having done the same with other authors. I guess it was that introduction. If she had been working on a new book, what had happened?

I'm also one of those people who watch some old movie or show and wonder where this actress or that actor has ended up and then look them up. I want to make clear, however, that I don't fall for those terrible clickbait YouTube videos showing fake pictures of someone's "gruesome fate"; and thinking about it, I usually limit my search to actors, actresses or authors (and sometimes cats and dogs I have become attached to on the web which may lead to tears, but that's a different story).

One day, much to my surprise, I found something, a post from November 2016 on Lise McClendon's website. McClendon also writes mystery and was a friend of Prowell until they lost touch.
She wrote the post on the day she found out about her friend's death over one year before.
Obviously, Prowell had unknown issues that not only made her stop writing (although the fourth Phoebe Siegel was supposed to be published in 2000 or 2001, and there was another standalone manuscript) and break off contact to writer friends, but that even made her stop talking about writing with her family.
I felt strangely sad about it. I don't know what I had expected to find, but that wasn't it.

Of course the same happens with people in our own lives. It's like a train. People go with you from the start to the end of the line, some go with you from just one to the next station, some get off suddenly, maybe even without saying goodbye, and sometimes you throw some off the train ... hm, maybe the analogy isn't that good, but you get the idea.
We can't expect to spend all our lives with always the same people around even if it may come as a shock if someone hops off without a warning after a long time.
With some people it's easier to accept, with others it isn't. Sometimes it hurts to feel you have been cut out of someone's life without knowing what you did or if it has to do with you at all. Sometimes you just drift apart and that's okay.
And sometimes you reach out and re-connect which may work out or not.

That reminds me that there's a friend I should call. It has been a while since we last talked.
Oh, and if you wonder, by the way, the Prowell books didn't get purged.

Source:
Lise McClendon: Remembering Sandra West Prowell. On:Lise McClendon, November 18, 2016