Oil heiress Alison Baumann pens murder mystery
Author says she draws on ‘bizarre people’ she’s met as well as Houston friend designer Amen
If there’s such a thing as royalty in Houston, Alison Baumann’s family was it.
Her grandfather was “king of the wildcatters” Hugh Roy Cullen, who became one of the richest men in the world, and her mother was Wilhelmina Cullen Robertson Smith, a philanthropist whose generosity through the Cullen Foundation reached dozens of local nonprofits, from the University of Houston to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Texas Medical Center.
Baumann, Cullen’s youngest grandchild and Smith’s youngest child, lives in San Francisco now, after growing up in Houston, then living in London, Milan, New York and Los Angeles. She went to the Kinkaid School and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and then ditched a plan to study acting at Carnegie Mellon University, headed to London to study dialects, lost 40 pounds and became a model.
She’s 63 now and a wife, mother and grandmother. She’s been married for 34 years to Peter Baumann, who in the mid-1970s was part of the Tangerine Dream electronica music group. The couple has three kids and two grandkids, and Baumann jokes that one of her grandchildren seems to be the same firecracker she was.
The oil heiress has nurtured her creative side in filmmaking and writing, and recently published her second novel, “Thicker Than Blood” (Volassal Publishing; 272 pages; $19.95), a seamy murder mystery set in New Orleans and flecked with references to Houston.
In the first book — she writes under the name A.R. Baumann — her protagonist, Nick Noelle, is a Houston detective who solves a series of high-profile murders. A good guy with big flaws, Noelle finds himself in New Orleans to be with his dying mother, yet manages to get tangled up in yet another serial-killer case, with interesting results in her newest book.
The killer, who also is a cannibal, is seeking vengeance on clergymen who are molesting children, and as the murders unfold, Noelle learns more about his own family, himself and the possibilities for redemption.
Baumann visits her hometown a couple of times a year and will be here Thursday for a book signing and reading at Murder By the Book. She took time recently to talk about life, her hopeful spirit and her book.
Q: You’ve done a variety of things. What made you shift into writing, especially crime novels?
A: As a child I always wrote. In my early 20s, I wrote a play. I never stopped writing. The detective thing was a lark. I started a story based on a family in Texas. It was so emotional, and the first draft was 3,000 pages. I kept changing it, and I had to let it go. I wrote a memoir and something about spirituality. As a fluke I wrote a detective novel (“Under a Cloud of Rain”) set in Houston’s society. I was fascinated by (the Jacques Mossler murder case). What I really want to write are stories about people and life and emotional and spiritual conflicts. That’s really where my heart is. I enjoyed the murder mystery because it’s not about me.
Q: Your books have Nick Noelle as a protagonist who fights his own demons — drugs, alcohol and gambling. You’ve been open about your own journey as a recovering alcoholic and addict. How does your experience influence your characters and story plot?
A: After high school, I was working as a model in London and Milan, and I married young to a fashion photographer, and we moved to New York and I went back to acting. I went to bars and clubs, Studio 54 and all of that. I delved into the world of alcoholism and addiction, and when I was 26, it stopped me in my tracks. I went into treatment for a year. I can tap into that since I’m not doing a personal novel. We all live, in a certain way, on the edge, whatever our private demons are … alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, compulsive spending. I can express that and the different layers people go through.
Q: “Under a Cloud of Rain” and “Thicker Than Blood” are both pretty dark. Since that’s not been your life, how do you tap into that underbelly?
A: I’ve lived in a lot of places and met all kinds of people. Not serial killers, necessarily, but I’ve met a lot of bizarre people in my life, and I can draw on them. I’ve lived away from Houston since I was 18, and I’m 63 now. I’ve worked in facilities as a volunteer where I’ve seen very seedy sides of people.
Q: Does that stuff ever shock you?
A: No, I see the soul in the person. I’ve been to prisons and have done volunteer work; I volunteer every Wednesday in a mental ward in San Francisco. A lot of them were homeless … my heart goes out to that, to people who’ve been unfortunate. I have friends who haven’t had a lot of money or privilege. I want to have a varied life, to go out into the world and be with all kinds of people.
Q: To some degree, you based the serial-killer character on your good friend, Kelly Gale Amen, a Houston interior designer. He thinks it’s funny — in fact, I think he’s proud of it. What parts of his personality feed your psycho killer?
A: I’ve known Kelly since I was 16. I was at HSPVA, and I met him at a friend’s house. Kelly is really the last of the Southern gentlemen. He is a very deep person, which I think a lot of people don’t recognize. He loves to play and is funny and wise, and he’s just pure; I love him. So I thought a character based on the way he dresses and the way he holds himself with tongue-in-cheek humor would be perfect.
Q: Is anyone else in your life inspiration for a character in this book?
A: Nick Noelle has the humor of my father (Corbin James Robertson), who was from Chicago and came from nothing. He was like a Damon Runyon character, the Chicago accent, the cigar and the Johnny Walker Black. Between him and Gene Hackman’s character in “The French Connection,” I created Nick Noelle.
Q: What do you want people to take away from “Thicker Than Blood?”
A: That the world is a paradox. We all want to judge and put people in boxes and put our lives in a box, but you can’t do that. Nothing is simple. Life isn’t simple or linear.