Lila Blake – Ruff Drafts

The Filbert Steps (The Telegraph Hill Mysteries)
by Lila Blake

About The Filbert Steps

The Filbert Steps (The Telegraph Hill Mysteries)
Cozy Mystery
1st in Series
Setting – California
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sutro House Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 31, 2026
Print length ‏ : ‎ 301 pages
Digital
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-8951746016
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0H52YDTRG

A body on the steps. A neighborhood that saw nothing.

Vivian Salvatore came back to Telegraph Hill with a cat, a divorce settlement, and a book she cannot seem to write.

At fifty-two, newly single and trying to rebuild her life, she has settled into the rhythms of San Francisco’s most beautiful staircase: coffee at the corner café, morning walks on the Filbert Steps, old neighbors on three corners, and the comforting illusion that everyone knows everyone.

Then, on a bright October morning, Vivian finds one of the city’s most ambitious developers dead on the third landing.

The police are ready to call it a fall. But Vivian spent twenty-seven years reading teenagers’ faces for a living, and she knows when a story does not fit. A coat buttoned wrong. A cigarette ground out where it should not be. Storefronts quietly sold to a post-office box in Delaware. And a neighborhood full of people who had reason to want one man gone.

As Vivian begins asking questions, she discovers that Telegraph Hill has been keeping secrets for years — about money, loyalty, grief, and who really gets to call a place home.

The Filbert Steps introduces Vivian Salvatore, a sharp-eyed, warm-hearted sleuth who notices everything and forgives almost as much.

Perfect for readers who love older women sleuths, atmospheric San Francisco mysteries, neighborhood secrets, found community, and fair-play cozy mysteries with literary depth.

GUEST POST

Seven Rules for Walking the Filbert Steps, According to Vivian Salvatore

By Lila Blake

I walk the Filbert Steps most mornings. Two hundred wooden steps down, two hundred back up, though I do not recommend counting them unless you need the number for a book or an argument. The city calls this exercise. I call it the route to coffee.

There are rules.

Find the railing before you need it.

My mother taught me this in houses, but it applies equally well to hills. The boards are wet in the morning where the garden has been watered, and San Francisco has never apologized for making a sidewalk vertical. Put your hand on the rail. Pride is a poor substitute for balance.

Do not begin before there is enough light to see what you came for.

Tourists arrive at six in the morning, photograph the top of the hill, and complain that the picture is a square of darkness. This is not the hill’s fault. Wait until the crest begins to sort itself out against the sky. The Bay will appear through the eucalyptus in pieces. It is better that way. Views should make you work a little.

Let the parrots have their argument.

They are loud, unreasonable, and entirely convinced the dispute is urgent. Nobody on Telegraph Hill has established what they are arguing about. Real estate is the leading theory. Do not shout back. They have more stamina and no sense of embarrassment.

Learn the ordinary things.

A neighborhood tells you what belongs there if you walk it often enough. Sal’s first cigarette is pinched flat on the third landing. The wine-shop delivery comes before the sidewalks fill. Greco raises a boot from his bench instead of saying good morning. Maria’s dog pauses at the café threshold for three seconds before going to the radiator.

People think noticing means looking for the unusual. Usually it means knowing the usual so well that the wrong thing cannot hide inside it.

Never confuse a familiar route with a safe one.

This is not advice about crime. It is advice about attention. Familiarity can make the eyes lazy. You stop looking at the building you have passed for fifteen years. You stop asking who owns it, who works above it, or why a stranger has spent four minutes studying its upper windows without once entering the shop below.

A place can change while you are walking through it every day. Sometimes the change is a new awning. Sometimes it is a man with a tablet taking notes.

Buy coffee from someone who already knows your order.

Mine is a doppio at Coppa’s. Sal begins it when I come through the door and pretends this is efficiency rather than affection. I pay cash. I take the window table. Lou folds the Chronicle into thirds. The espresso machine fails once, but only for Sal, because it has principles.

A café is useful because people enter believing they came for coffee. They did not. They came to be seen arriving. They came to report that a dog was slow getting up or that a lawyer’s letter has not been opened. They came because sitting alone and sitting alone among people are different conditions.

Walk back up, even when there is an easier way.

There are streets with gentler grades. There are cars. There are days when the climb is inconvenient and days when it is the only useful thing I do. Somewhere on the second flight, my breathing becomes too loud for self-deception. By the top, I generally know what I think.

The last rule is not about the steps.

When you get home, feed the cat, make tea, and write one sentence.

It does not have to be the right sentence. I lost sixteen months waiting for the right one. Write the sentence that is willing to arrive. The next morning, walk down again. The neighborhood will have changed in some small way while you slept. Your job is to notice.

The Filbert Steps is the first book in the Telegraph Hill Mysteries by Lila Blake. It releases August 31, 2026, from Sutro House Press. Learn more at lilablake.com.

About Lila Blake

Lila Blake writes San Francisco neighborhood mysteries about foggy stairways, old houses, found family, and the secrets people keep when a place begins to change. Her Telegraph Hill Mysteries begin with The Filbert Steps, a literary cozy mystery featuring Vivian Salvatore, a fifty-two-year-old former teacher rebuilding her life after divorce. Lila is published by Sutro House Press, an independent fiction imprint based in San Francisco.

Links:

Website: lilablake.com

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/71129242.Lila_Blake

Purchase Link: Amazon

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