By Kaaren Valenta

Like the characters in their novels, Justin Scott and Ray Sipherd know what it is like to live double lives.

The well-published writers, both of whom live in Newtown, have had multi-faceted careers with accomplishments that extend well beyond the series of mysteries that each are known for.  Yet much of their work is, or was, done under cover.

“I’ve always led a double life. It allows you to play a little, to experiment, to be a little less concerned,” Justin Scott said. “I’ve used many pen names. The first one, J.S. Blazer, is a play on my middle name.”

 Once he even wrote a blurb for the dust cover of one of the books he had written under a pen name. “I said it was ‘my kind of book,’’’ he recalled, laughing at the memory.

Ray Sipherd doesn’t use pen names. But early in his career, when he was still a full-time editor at Reader’s Digest Books, he secretly moonlighted as one of the four original writers of the children’s television series “Sesame Street.”

Reader’s Digest frowned on outside work, Mr Sipherd explained, but his secret was revealed when he appeared on national television to accept the first of three Emmy Awards he would eventually receive for Sesame Street.

The two writers will discuss “The Art of the Mystery” in a free program at 7 pm on Tuesday, November 16, at Cyrenius H. Booth Library in Newtown. In an interview at Ray Sipherd’s house on Echo Valley Road this week, the two long-time friends discussed their recent work.

Ray Sipherd has almost completed his third Jonathan Wilder mystery, which will be titled The Devil’s Hawk. Once again, it smoothly weaves bird lore and legend in a suspenseful plot.

 “It’s set in Arizona near Tucson where my parents live,” Mr Sipherd said. “It’s about illegal aliens that are brought across the border from Mexico by smugglers, robbed, abandoned, and found dead of dehydration in the desert. [In the book] I made up an old Indian legend that if you see a great black bird — probably a vulture — hovering over you, that is the Devil’s hawk and it means that you are going to die.”

Mr Sipherd’s main character, Jonathan Wilder, a well-traveled ornithologist, painter and writer of nature guides, finds himself involved in solving the mystery of the deaths, just as he uncovered the truth in the Dance of the Scarecrows and The Audubon Quartet.

In the mysteries, Mr Sipherd draws upon his great interest in birds, an interest he picked up when he began spending weekends in Newtown in 1967. Avian habits and lore are woven into his stories to provide color and clues.

Justin Scott is the author of 16 novels, including The Shipkiller, Normandie Triangle, A Pride of Royals, Rampage, The Widow of Desire, The Nine Dragons and Treasure Island: A Modern Novel, as well as the Benjamin Abbot detective series (Hardscape and StoneDust), and Many Happy Returns, which was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

Newtown readers are particularly enchanted by his Benjamin Abbot series, set in the town of Newberry, a quaint Connecticut town where a flagpole marks the intersection of Main Street and Church Hill Road, and the protagonist, Ben Abbott, is a real estate agent that spends his time solving crimes. When his regular publisher, Viking, opted not to continue the series, Mr Scott wound up selling it to an English publisher, Collins Crime, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Ironically, when FrostLine was published in England last year, The London Times, The London Observer and The London Telegraph all gave it rave reviews and said it was among the best of American mysteries, Mr Scott said.

“I’ve got others I want to write — I have three in mind,” he said. “But instead I’ve been doing thrillers, and I have a series of short stories written from a cat’s point of view. The cat is a feline version of Ben Abbott.”

Justin Scott was born in Manhattan and grew up on Long Island in a family of professional writers. His father, A. Leslie Scott, wrote some 250 western novels and reams of poetry; his mother, Lily K. Scott, wrote novels and romances as well as short stories. His sister, Alison Scott Skelton, is also a novelist, as was her late husband, C.L. Skelton.

Mr Scott worked at a variety of jobs before becoming a full-time writer. He drove boats and trucks, built beach houses on Fire Island, tended bar in a Hell’s Kitchen saloon, and edited an electronic engineering journal. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American history, and has traveled extensively in Russia, China and Scotland researching his novels.

Both of Justin Scott’s first two novels, written under pen names and released by different publishers, were nominated for the “best first mystery writer” award, a scenario that created more than a little consternation in the publishing world.

Besides “Sesame Street” and his Jonathan Wilder mysteries, Ray Sipherd has written seven children’s books and more than 30 television programs for WNET, including the award-winning “Years Without Harvest.” He was the creator of WNET’s magazine of the arts, All Things Considered.

A graduate of Yale University, he also has written The Courtship of Peggy McCourt and The Christmas Store.

“I’ve never used a pen name but I once decided that if I ever did, I’d also use my middle name: Duke,”  Mr Sipherd said. “I’d be Raymond Duke, or if I wrote a western, I’d be Duke Raymond.”

 He and a childhood friend, the Oscar-winning cinematographer Owen Reis, have collaborated on the script for a movie about their own experiences in a hospital, operated by Catholic nuns, that treated polio victims in the 1950s.

“I just finished it today,” Mr Sipherd said. “I got some screenwriting software to produce the final draft. I do most of my writing in long-hand on yellow legal pads.”

He is also halfway through a musical about a French circus; he has written the first act and the lyrics, and is collaborating with a composer who lives on the West Coast.

“I have a compulsion, if not an addiction, to write,” Mr Sipherd said. “A day seems wasted if I haven’t written anything.”

Justin Scott understands how he feels.

“I’ve never felt a compulsion, but the days I didn’t write, I’m not as happy. Something’s wrong,” he said, adding reflectively, “It’s one profession where it never occurs to you to retire.”

Mr Scott’s next book, Murder Among Friends, will be published in the spring.

“As a writer, you tend not to think about your book that is in the [book] store,” he said. “You’re already focused on the one you are working on now.”