Hancock Park’s June Dixon to Read First Novel at Chevalier’s Tonight

While shopping at Landis Stationary yesterday afternoon, we heard about June Dixon’s book reading tonight at Chevalier’s Books. The charming Ms. Dixon, an actress-writer-comedienne and Hancock Park resident for many years, came into the store with her daughter and a flyer about her latest accomplishment, her first novel.

Dixon’s book, “The Very English Lady” is a mystery. It’s the story of Laura Mitchell is an English-born widow living in an upscale Los Angeles condominium complex. Early one morning her quiet, uneventful life is shattered when she comes upon a man’s naked body in the swimming pool–eerily echoing her discovery, a year earlier, of her husband John’s body in the same pool (John Mitchell had suffered a massive heart attack while swimming). The police are asking a lot of questions and a neighbor–a friend of John’s, whom she hardly knew–wants to buy her late husband’s laptop computer, ostensibly as a gift to a nephew. Why? What is happening?

Both a “page-turner” mystery and a surprising romance, Laura’s quest to discover the truth takes her on a strange journey through her emotions as she remembers the past and, in reality, as she determines to trace John’s business activities. In her search for the real John Mitchell, she rediscovers herself . . . her long-suppressed talents and desires . . . and the promise of a new and more fulfilling future.

Dixon and her husband,Donald Monat. have a quirky website known as the Monat-Dixon Line, a word play on the more famous “Mason Dixon Line” where they produce a quite funny, typically English podcast filled with their off-beat thoughts, comedy sketches and songs. The two have been working as writer-producer-performers on three different continents for more than fifty years in theatre, radio, television, film and the simple printed word.

Ms. Dixon promises a very English reading, Q&A and book signing tonight, Wednesday, January 18th at 7:00 p.m. at Chevalier’s Books at 126 N Larchmont Blvd.