VENTURA COUNTY WEEKEND : Independent Outlet’s Success Is No Mystery : Thousand Oaks shop and whodunit authors have a relationship that serves both well.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Ventura County mystery buffs got lucky.

Mysteries to Die For, the Thousand Oaks bookshop that specializes in whodunits, had back-to-back signings by hot new writers Michael Connelly and Janet Evanovich. Connelly, a former police reporter for The Times Valley Edition, won a coveted Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for his first novel, “The Black Echo,” published in 1992. Since then, he has published three more books featuring LAPD homicide detective Heironymous “Harry” Bosch, a soulful sleuth who has caught the eye of the country’s No. 1 mystery fan, President Clinton.

On Sunday, Connelly was signing his latest title, a non-Bosch mystery called “The Poet” (Little Brown). Sherman Oaks writer Robert Crais, author of a first-rate series of comic thrillers featuring private investigator Elvis Cole, had dropped by to say hello. Also present was Richard Barre, a Santa Barbara-based writer who recently published his first mystery novel, called “The Innocents,” featuring a surfing P.I.

Evanovich had come to Ventura County to promote her second Stephanie Plum mystery, “Two for the Dough,” published by Scribner. Last year, “One for the Money,” the comic thriller that introduced the big-haired bounty hunter from Trenton, N.J., was a finalist for most of mystery fiction’s major awards, including the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Shamus and Macavity awards. The book won the Independent Mystery Booksellers’ Dilys award for “the most fun book to sell.”

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Independent bookstores and writers have a symbiotic relationship that serves both well in an era increasingly dominated by giant chain stores. As first-time authors often discover to their dismay, publishers routinely fail to promote the books they publish. Publishers won’t push your book “unless your name is Grisham,” jokes Lee Goldberg, a TV writer whose first mystery novel, “My Gun Has Bullets,” was published last year.

While new authors often can’t find their books on the shelves of the Barnes & Nobles and Supercrowns, best-selling writers are boosted by everything from national advertising to the purchase by their publishers of prime display space in chain stores. It’s a Catch-22 situation, says Goldberg: “They only promote the people who don’t need it anymore.”

The independents will promote any writer they think their customers, often regulars who make weekly book runs, will enjoy. Moore schedules as many author signings as she can and advertises them in a newsletter she sends out every other month to 1,000 regular customers. The signings are important to her, Moore says. They bring people into the store, “and it’s also doing something for the community.” Her customers love the chance to say a few words to a favorite author and to get his or her newest book inscribed. “That’s an added value I can give my customers,” says Moore. “I can’t give them big discounts.”

Many grateful writers say independents are a key to their success. “I don’t think I would have a second book if it weren’t for the independent booksellers,” says Goldberg, who is president of the Mystery Writers of America Southern California chapter. A Tarzana resident, he is currently finishing the sequel to “Bullets,” called “Beyond the Beyond.”

Other authors agree. In an afterword to “The Poet,” Connelly thanks the booksellers he has met in recent years “who have put my stories into the hands of the readers.” Evanovich says, “I’d be nobody without the independents. It’s very hard in the chains. They don’t hand-sell.”

Chains also have newsletters and book signings. It’s the hand-selling that distinguishes Mysteries to Die For, Mysterious Bookshop in West Hollywood, Book ‘Em Mysteries in South Pasadena and other independent specialty stores from the chains, authors say. The owners and managers of the specialty stores are typically mystery buffs themselves. They read the books coming into their stores. They also find out what their patrons like and recommend new authors likely to excite their customers, or at least satisfy their jones. “They’re the people who say, ‘If you like Carl Haissen or Donald Westlake, you’ll like Lee Goldberg,” Goldberg says.

Both Connelly and Evanovich are promoting their books on national tours, evidence that their publishers have begun putting bucks behind them.

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Before Evanovich began signing books in Thousand Oaks, she spoke briefly about herself to the two dozen fans gathered in the shop. A slim woman of 50-something, she is decidedly Stephanie Plum-like, funny, raunchy. Pre-Plum, Evanovich was first a painter, then a writer of romances. She loved writing romances, she says, “but after 12 books I was running out of sexual positions. I’m a very simple person. I’m not into vegetables.”

The most valuable thing she learned writing books published in series titled Loveswept and Second Chance at Love: “I now know 42 adjectives to describe a nipple.”

Evanovich’s first book was optioned by Tri-Star for $750,000. She is rumored to have received an $800,000 advance for her third book, now being finished. From a working-class background, Evanovich is still a bit stunned by her good fortune. Since the success of the Plum books, her mathematician husband, Alex, has retired from his government job to run her writing business and to be a house husband. She bought him the best stove money could buy.

“We had been married for 30 years, and we never had a savings account,” she says. When her agent called to tell her about the movie deal, she chided him: “You’re telling me this at 11 o’clock at night, and all the stores are closed.” The book was optioned for Wendy Finerman, who produced “Forrest Gump.”

Evanovich’s signing was a success by any standard. Not all are. Lia Matera, the Santa Cruz-based author of “Designer Crimes,” recalls a disastrous signing arranged for her at a Safeway supermarket. Her books were arranged on a table near the root vegetables, and customers averted their eyes as they pushed by. Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, an announcement came over the loudspeaker: “The next person who comes to the cash register with a Lia Matera novel will win a free bag of groceries!”

After Evanovich’s Thousand Oaks appearance she dropped in at several local chain stores, introducing herself, offering them autographed copies of “Two for the Dough” and suggesting that they move her book to a more prominent position, say, up front next to Connelly’s “The Poet.”

In Studio City she was thrilled to discover her name on the marquee of the Bookstar in the former La Reina Theatre. “It’s like ‘Janet Evanovich, appearing nightly,’ ” she whooped. A publicist had arranged to have her picture taken under the marquee. Evanovich is going to send the photo out as her 1996 Christmas card.