Kathryn Miller Haines Click photo for larger image.
Heather Terrell Click photo for larger image.
Maggie Leffler Click photo for larger image.

Hat tricks are rare achievements for hockey players, but unheard of in Pittsburgh's long literary life -- until this year.

The region can now claim its first trifecta of novelists in one year, as three women in their 30s have arrived unheralded as first-time authors.

Adding to the rarity is that writing is a second career for the trio, a physician, a lawyer and an actress.

Kathryn Miller Haines

Actually, for Kathryn Miller Haines, novel-writing is a third option. By day, she's a librarian at the Center for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh, by night star of Mystery's Most Wanted dinner theater, and when she has the time, author of "The War Against Miss Winter" (Harper, $13.95). The original paperback debuts next month.

It's the first of two under contract featuring Rosie Winter, plucky Broadway actress who finds work tough to come by during World War II and takes a day job helping a private eye.

When he turns up dead, Rosie trades in the greasepaint for a magnifying glass and turns detective.

"The war was something that always interested me because my dad was an aficionado," Haines said, "so when I decided to try writing a mystery, it seemed like a good time to set a novel."

With degrees in both theater and writing, Haines, a Wilkinsburg resident, was also able to work her acting background into the book.

"I had done a lot of theater in Texas and Pittsburgh," she said. "It's one of my first loves, and it's great fun to write about."

She's wrapping up her second Rosie Winter mystery now, for release next year.

Heather Terrell

Like Haines, Heather Terrell's experience supplied the background for her first mystery, "The Chrysalis," a tale that's not only "ripped from the headlines" but captures some of that "Da Vinci Code" cachet.

Terrell, now at home in Sewickley with a 1-year-old, was a litigator in New York when she encountered stories of contested artworks stemming from Nazi confiscations during World War II.

"Art had been a passion of mine, but when I began hearing about a rising tide of lawsuits over contested paintings, I thought it might be a great mystery," she said.

"The whole field opens up a wide range of legal and moral issues. While a museum might have the legal right to a painting, the moral issue is how that museum got the work in the first place."

Terrell said she spend "hours writing and rewriting" her story of lawyer Mora Coyne, who finds herself representing an art museum in a battle over a 17th-century Dutch painting, "The Chrysalis" (Ballantine, $21.95).

The book mixes three stories, that of the painter who uses religious symbolism in his work, the Dutch family who lost the painting during World War II and the current New York art scene.

A native of Upper St. Clair, she returned with her husband to the region two years ago, had a baby and signed a two-book deal with Random House.

		Meet the authors Mystery Lovers Bookshop will introduce Heather Terrell and Kathryn Haines in upcoming book parties at the store, 514 Allegheny River Blvd., Oakmont. Terrell will meet her readers May 18 at 6 p.m. Haines visits June 22 at 6 p.m. For reservations, 412-828-4877.

"It's been an exciting time here since I came home," Terrell said. She's finishing up her sequel with Mora Coyne hot on the trail of a stolen ancient map of the world.

"The book will address how art and history resound in our world today," she said, adding that if all goes well, her new one will be in stores next year. "The Chrysalis" should be on shelves May 15.

Maggie Leffler

Maggie Leffler's first novel, "Diagnosis of Love" (Delta, $13 paperback), was published last month, but unlike her fellow Western Pennsylvanian crime authors, the book is "strictly mainstream," she said.

The hero, a young doctor, tries to sort out various romantic entanglements while making sure her patients are on the mend.

"I wrote this book seven times," said Leffler, a family practice physician in Tarentum. During her residency at St. Margaret's Hospital in Aspinwall, she decided to try for a full-time writing career and applied to the Iowa Writers Workshop.

"When I didn't get in, I saw it as a sign that I was to stick with medicine, and I've never regretted it," she said. She also stuck with writing.

Leffler writes at night after getting her 2-year-old son to bed. "If it's going well, I'll be up late, go to bed and not be able to fall asleep. If it's not, I'll be in bed by 11. You have to work out your life so you can do both your jobs."

Although it went through seven rewrites, the plot and characters in "Diagnosis of Love" remained relatively constant. But after the death of her mother, Leffler said she worked to reflect that key moment in her life in the book.

"Most of the book is still comedic in tone, but I had my character confront that sadder issue in her life as well," she said.

Like her colleagues, she's hard at work on her second novel, also due for 2008 publication. Leffler promises that it will be a departure from her first.