"Rough Cider" in the Making by Peter Lovesey

This article appeared in the Mystery Readers Journal: Murder in Wartime (33:2), Summer 2017. Check out the Table of Contents for this and other articles focusing on Murder in Wartime. Rough Cider is one of Peter Lovesey's favorite books...and mine! Buy this back issue! Available in hardcopy or as a downloadable PDF.

Rough Cider in the Making by Peter Lovesey

The book of mine closest to my own experience is Rough Cider, written over thirty years ago in 1986. It has remained in print and is often mentioned by readers as a personal favourite, a non-series ‘one-off’ written in the first person as if by a university lecturer, who is persuaded or compelled to recall traumatic events from 1943 in rural England during World War II. Much of it drew on my own memories of being made homeless and moved from suburban London to a farm in the West Country.

In 1944 my home was destroyed by a V-1 rocket, one of those pilotless planes that Hitler sent over from France. Miraculously, all my family survived while everyone in the other half of the semi-detached house was killed. My mother had gone shopping when the air-raid siren sounded. She had left two of her three sons in the house. I was at school nearby and our father was away in the army. Mother had told my brother John, who was 14, to make sure that if the warning came he took my younger brother, Andrew, who was 3, under the Morrison shelter—a cast-iron table that had been offered by the government to all houses within range of the rockets. The table held up under the weight of the rubble and the two boys were dug out alive.

Being homeless, we slept for a few nights on the vicar’s living-room floor until arrangements were made to send us to a temporary home out of London. So my mother and her three sons took a long train journey to Cornwall in the West Country and were found accommodation on an isolated farm. The farmer and his wife and grown-up son had no choice but to accept this family from miles away. We were ‘billeted’—to use the terminology of the time. With hindsight I can understand how our hosts must have felt to have a woman in a state of shock and three noisy kids foisted on them at harvest time, but for us it was difficult to understand why we were not more welcome. The farmhouse was dark inside and lit by oil-lamps, and had curtains across all the doors to keep draughts to a minimum. As an 8-year-old, I found it spooky. Good thing I wasn’t without my family, as many so-called evacuees had found themselves earlier in the war when they were sent to the country for their own safety.

We didn’t remain there long—perhaps as little as a month. My father, on compassionate leave, found us a temporary house back in London, and we returned, much relieved, to the bomb-infested suburbs. But the memory of that time is still vivid in my mind. When I came to write Rough Cider forty years later, it was easy to get back into the thought process of a child, watching events unfold without fully understanding them. I began the book with a sentence that plunges the reader straight into that world:

“When I was nine, I fell in love with a girl of twenty called Barbara, who killed herself.”

Of course, the writer’s imagination moves on from remembered things to events that didn’t happen in reality. There was no suicide on the farm, no murder and no cider that I can recall. But the novel is centered around a plot involving an American soldier posted to England, and as a boy I did get to meet GIs at the local American Army base. After our return to London, we Lovesey boys were invited to a party put on specially by the GIs for ‘bombed-out’ kids—and it was wonderful. I can still remember the silent films they projected onto a screen for us—Buster Keaton and Chaplin—and the magician, and the food! Food we didn’t know existed. I was one of the first British children to taste a Hershey Bar and chewing gum. No wonder I can understand how the boy Theo came to idolize the soldier called Duke.
So there it is. I mustn’t give away more of the plot. Rough Cider remains a personal favorite for reasons you will now understand.

***

Peter Lovesey has several series, including historical mysteries, as well as short stories, and stand-alone crime fiction. His books are fabulous reads.. all of them. 

Awards: Macmillan/Panther First Crime Novel Award, 1970, for Wobble to Death; Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger Award, 1977, 1995, and 1996, Gold Dagger Award, 1983, for The False Inspector Dew; Veuve Clicquot/Crime Writers Association Short Story Award, 1985; Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere, 1985; Prix du Roman d'Aventures, 1987; finalist for Best Novel award, Mystery Writers of America, 1988, for Rough Cider, and 1996, for The Summons; Ellery Queen Readers award, 1991; Anthony Award for best novel, 1992, for The Last Detective; Mystery Writers of America Golden Mysteries Short Story Prize, 1995; Crime Writers Association Macavity Award for Best Novel, 1997, for Bloodhounds, and 2004, for The House Sitter; Crime Writers Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award, 2000, for lifetime Achievement.

How I Switched from Writing Medical Journal Articles to Historical Fiction: Guest Post by MICHAEL J. COOPER

“Is this you?” asked the Intensive Care Nursery nurse at Oakland Kaiser, as she held up a copy of The National Inquirer. “Right here.” She tapped a lacquered nail on the text. “Is this you?” 

“Yes, it is,” I had to admit, relieved that she wasn’t referring to a photograph of me with a black strip covering my eyes. There was, indeed, no photograph attached to the short article, which reported on a paper I had recently published in the Journal of the Israel Medical Association.
 
“I thought it was!” she exclaimed with real enthusiasm, then added, “Will you sign this please?”
 
As I had been staring at the article, I thought she meant for me to sign it, perhaps with a dedication. But looking up, I saw that she was holding out an opened patient chart.
 
“You need to sign this verbal order,” she said simply.
 
I quickly signed the V.O. and gave her back the chart along with her copy of The National Inquirer.
 
The year was 1979, and I was a pediatric resident at Oakland Kaiser, recently having returned from living and studying in Israel for the previous eleven years. I had immigrated to Israel after graduating Oakland High in 1966, and after a few years studying in Jerusalem, had managed to be accepted to Tel Aviv University Medical School. As part of the requirements for the MD degree, students were obliged to write a dissertation based on original research in any area of our choice. I had chosen to write mine on the effect of meditation on serum cholesterol and blood pressure. 
 
I subsequently published the research in the Journal of the Israel Medical Association, but since that was in Hebrew, I also submitted the paper to the up-and-coming peer-reviewed Journal of Human Stress.  With my research article just having appeared in that journal, I had a pretty good idea how it had made it into the pages of The National Inquirer—a few months before, I had received a call from a free-lance journalist in Florida, who wanted to interview me about my research. I agreed and proceeded to speak with him for a few minutes. 
 
And now, here I was—in The National Inquirer—with my “fifteen minutes of fame” lasting less than a minute. 
 
Sure, it wasn’t the New York Times, the paper of record with the slogan, "All the News That's Fit to Print." But The National Inquirer was also renown and known by some to print “All the News That Fits.”
 
And as I completed training in pediatrics and went on to specialize in pediatric cardiology, I would continue to publish research papers in peer-reviewed journals. There were no more articles in The National Inquirer, but that was OK, because the only thing worse than being “damned with faint praise,” was any praise, or for that matter, any mention in The National Inquirer.
 
But what about the transition from medical writing to historical fiction?
 
Once I finished my pediatric cardiology fellowship at UCSF, I remained on the clinical faculty and continued to research and publish in medical journals, and took a full-time job with Northern California Kaiser-Permanente. As my practice expanded to include clinics and hospitals in Walnut Creek, Vallejo, Santa Rosa, Oakland, Stockton, Richmond, Napa, Fairfield, and Vacaville, I eventually made a conscious decision to reduce my medical writing. This decision happened to coincide with my interest drawn back to Israel.  
 
At this point (the early 1990s) under the leadership of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, there was finally a real peace process in the works—the Oslo Accords. But to my dismay, there was a good deal of angry push-back to Rabin’s efforts—both in Israel and in the US. In this environment, I regularly published letters, opinion pieces and essays in support of Rabin’s peace efforts in local and national Jewish periodicals. Though I received plenty of supportive responses, I was dismayed to receive more than a few angry reactions. And as the peace process moved forward, the resistance increased. 
 
In the Middle East, resistance to the Oslo Accords came from an unlikely and unholy alliance: on one extreme, ultra-nationalistic Jewish settlers, and on the other extreme, militant Palestinians such as Hamas—strange bedfellows in their vehement opposition to peace-making efforts. 
 
In Israel, this opposition reached a fever pitch in 1995 prior to parliamentary elections. As Rabin’s efforts were rejected by Hamas with increasingly horrific acts of terror, Rabin’s efforts were also rejected by Netanyahu and his right-wing allies in the form of personally vilifying him as a crypto-Nazi and a traitor to Israel. The risk of his assassination, as assessed by Israeli security services, was high. And, indeed, after a huge pro-Oslo/pro-Rabin demonstration in Tel Aviv on November 4, 1995, Rabin was killed by a right-wing Israeli zealot with two shots to the back. 
 
The shock to the Israel public and the international community was profound. And after Rabin’s death, with the ascension of a right-wing Israeli government under Netanyahu, the peace process was derailed and eventually died.
 
For catharsis, I turned from writing letters and op-ed pieces to writing historical fiction. Setting my books in the Holy Land at pivotal points of history, this was my way of trying to insinuate a message of coexistence and peace into a vehicle I hoped might succeed in changing a few hearts and minds. I began with historical fiction set in British Mandatory Palestine in 1948 - Foxes in the Vineyard. This was followed by The Rabbi’s Knight, set in the Holy Land at the twilight of the First Crusade in 1290, and lastly, the soon-to-be-released Wages of Empire, largely set in Ottoman Palestine at the beginning of WWI.
 
Beginning in 2007, I also turned to volunteer work for a US-based non-governmental organization offering pediatric specialty services to children within the Palestinian Authority. In doing about two missions per year since then, I’ve attempted to be part of the solution as a pediatric cardiologist for children with limited or no access to care. In short, healing hearts.
 
And now, it so happens that Wages of Empire is a novel about war in a time of war—holding up a mirror that reflects on the current paroxysms of violence in the Middle East, and asking the question: What does that history have to do with the present?

In a word?

Everything.

***

 
Wages of Empire is now available for pre-sale in all formats by Amazon and other platforms. Please see author’s website - https://michaeljcooper.net/
 
 

Michael Cooper writes historical fiction set in the Middle East; Foxes in the Vineyard, set in 1948 Jerusalem won the 2011 Indie Publishing Contest grand prize and The Rabbi’s Knight, set in the Holy Land in 1290 was a finalist for the 2014 Chaucer Award for historical fiction. Coming in November of 2023, Wages of Empire set at the start of WW1 won the CIBA 2022 grand prize for young adult fiction and the first prize for wartime historical fiction.
 

Presenting THE RED-HOT BLUES CHANTEUSE: Guest Post by Ana Brazil

One of my earliest love affairs—at the tender age of six or so—was with the city of San Francisco. During the 1960s my mother would drive my brother, sister, and me over the Bay Bridge for dinner in Chinatown or fish-watching at Steinhart Aquarium or for a parade in North Beach. The City was magical, and no matter where I lived afterwards, I never lost my love for it.
 
Years after I fell in love with San Francisco, I also fell in love with its history. I’ve read up on the Gold Rush, Chinese immigration, the 1906 earthquake, Pan Pacific Expo history, and—thanks to my husband volunteering on The Rock for twenty years—Alcatraz Island.
 
But recently I’ve been more curious about San Francisco in the first months of 1919, a time just after the end of the world war and the almost-end of the Spanish influenza epidemic. I’ve been reading up on 1919 San Francisco because once again, I fell in love. This time the object of my affections is feisty globe-trotting vaudeville chanteuse Elsie Clark. (After inheriting Elsie’s newspaper-clipping-stuffed scrapbooks, photographs, playbills, sheet music, and recordings from my stepmother, how could I not fall in love with Elsie?)
 
Elsie’s fascinating life on the vaudeville stage inspired me to create the character of Viola Vermillion, vaudeville singer and the bodacious amateur sleuth of my upcoming mystery THE RED-HOT BLUES CHANTEUSE. Like Elsie, ambitious Viola dreams of making it to the vaudeville Big Time by headlining the Palace Theatre in New York City. 
 
And since San Francisco was home to some of the most exuberant vaudeville theatres on the West Coast, I joyfully set Viola’s first murderous adventure there.
 
Once Viola and her troupe of travelling vaudevillians (Female impersonators! Chinese acrobats! Drunken dogs!) begin their two-week run at Market Street’s Pantages Theater, however, Viola’s life come to a dead stop: She discovers her piano player and lover Stu Wiley murdered in the Pantages balcony, killed by her own gun. To remain out of jail, Viola is forced to uncover Stu’s secret past life in San Francisco and figure out which one of his lies got him killed. 

Viola’s not quite as innocent as she seems, and like her dead lover, she’s got secrets of her own. Like the encrypted notebook in her possession, which really belongs to the East Coast munitions tycoon who caused her sister’s death. Then there’s Viola’s surprising attraction to her hot new replacement piano player Jimmy Harrigan, who—unknown to Viola—is employed by the munitions tycoon and has been following her since the troupe performed in Seattle. 

As Viola unravels multiple secrets, lies, and suspicions, she still holds tight to her dream of reaching the vaudeville Big Time. But to succeed at anything, first she needs to stay alive . . .
Viola’s not quite as innocent as she seems, and like her dead lover, she’s got secrets of her own. Like the encrypted notebook in her possession, which really belongs to the East Coast munitions tycoon who caused her sister’s death. Then there’s Viola’s surprising attraction to her hot new replacement piano player Jimmy Harrigan, who—unknown to Viola—is employed by the munitions tycoon and has been following her since the troupe performed in Seattle. 
As Viola unravels multiple secrets, lies, and suspicions, she still holds tight to her dream of reaching the vaudeville Big Time. But to succeed at anything, first she needs to stay alive . . .
 
THE RED-HOT BLUES CHANTEUSE debuts on the historical mystery stage on Tuesday October 17^th in ebook and paperback, and to paraphrase the vaudeville-inspired musical Gypsy, I hope you let THE RED-HOT BLUES CHANTEUSE entertain you.
 
***

Many years ago, Ana Brazil inherited the scrapbooks, recordings, and theatrical ephemera of vaudeville songstress Elsie Clark, and used this treasure trove to create Viola Vermillion, the smart, sassy, and bodacious vaudeville heroine of THE RED-HOT BLUES CHANTEUSE. Ana’s currently writing the second of her Viola Vermillion Vaudeville Mysteries, THE MAGNOLIA VOODOO BRAWLER.

Ana is a founding member of the Paper Lantern Writers historical fiction collective and lives with her husband and cat just across the bay from San Francisco. 
 

What do Prohibition, the Magna Carta, and ‘Rollicking’ Comedy Have in Common? Guest Post by Melodie Campbell

Ah, the timeless question. Where do you get your ideas?

I think it was Stephen King who talked about a little mail-order store in small town America...I've never been able to find that store myself. Stephen keeps it a close secret (I hope you're smiling.)

But I had reason to experience that dilemma about two years ago, a year into the pandemic, and two years after my beloved husband David died. 

Damn that covid, and what it's done to publishing.  

When Orca Books told me they were capping the line that carried my Goddaughter series (translation: still selling the books in the line, but closing it to future books, at least for now)  I was in a tight spot.
I'd had 10 contracts in a row from Orca!  That series garnered three major awards!  How could I leave it behind?

Put another way: what the poop was I going to write next?

The Goddaughter series featured a present-day mob goddaughter who didn't want to be one. Gina Gallo had a fiance who thought she had gone straight. But of course, in each book she would get blackmailed into helping the family pull off heists or capers that would inevitably go wrong.  It allowed for a lot of madcap comedy.

Some would say I was a natural to write a series about a mob goddaughter (we'll just leave it at that.)  And I liked the serious theme behind the comedy: You're supposed to love and support your family. But what if your family is this one? 

Issues of grey have always interested me. We want things to be black and white in life, but quite often, they are more complex than that. I like exploring justice outside the law in my novels. But I digress...
The Goddaughter books brought me to the attention of Don Graves, a well-known newspaper book reviewer up here. He commiserated with the end of the Goddaughter series, and immediately suggested the following:

"Why don't you write about her grandmother? Prohibition days, when the mob was becoming big in Hamilton."

The idea burned in me. Except it wouldn't be her grandmother. (Don is older than me.) It would be her great-grandmother! Coming of age in the time of Rocco Perri and Bessie Starkman, the queen of mob women…

I settled on 1928, because that was the year women finally got the vote in England. The status of women features very much in this novel. Why? I was widowed too young. I could relate to my protagonist.      That got me interested in how widows fared in ages past.  
 

Did you know that the Magna Carta – which addressed the early laws of England established after the Norman invasion – was a turning point for women? In it, they decreed that a widow could not be forced to remarry. That meant a woman could hold the property of her late husband. Now, the fellows who came up with this law weren’t necessarily doing it for the benefit of women. Most experts agree that they were most likely keen on ensuring the late hubby’s property stayed in the family. But it had the effect of giving widows agency. Lucy, my protagonist, has money of her own, and that means freedom.

The time frame also allowed me to use the aftermath of WW1, including men like my own grandfather, wounded by gas, and shell-shocked. I would make the protagonist a young widow, because I knew grief - oh man, did I know grief. I could write convincingly about that.

But I would also use bathos to lighten the tale. (I seem incapable of writing anything straight.) The humour of the Goddaughter books finds its way into The Merry Widow Murders, and so far, has generated smiles for reviewers.

The book took me over a year to write, working full time on it. It helped me to channel my grief.  It forced me to step out of my comfort zone and write something with considerable depth. I had to learn how to combine comedy and deep emotion, to the betterment of both.

And it taught me that - even widowed - I wasn't entirely alone. That ideas are beautiful things that can come from friendship, and the good hearts of readers and reviewers you are fortunate to meet along your publishing journey.

***

Called the "Queen of Comedy" by the Toronto Sun, and compared to Janet Evanovich by Library Journal, Melodie Campbell writes capers, heists and golden age mysteries. Winner of ten awards for crime fiction, Melodie has 17 books and over 60 short stories, but she got her start writing stand-up. The Merry Widow Murders has just been released from Cormorant Books.

“The high society flair of Death on the Nile meets a 1920s ocean liner in this sensational mystery from Melodie Campbell.”  Open Book 

CWA DIAMOND DAGGER GOES TO CJ SANSOM

CJ Sansom is the recipient of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) Diamond Dagger. Congratulations!

One of Britain’s bestselling historical novelists, Christopher John Sansom was born in 1952 in Edinburgh. He was educated at Birmingham University with a BA and then a PhD in history. After working in a variety of jobs, he retrained as a solicitor and practised in Sussex, until becoming a full-time writer.

He combined both history and law in his debut novel Dissolution – a darkly fascinating novel of monastic murder and politics.

CJ Sansom said: “I feel so honoured to be awarded this year’s Diamond Dagger, and my heartfelt thanks to the CWA members and committee. Wonderful to think I now join such a distinguished group of authors. To think it all started with the idea that a novel set around Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries might make a good story. Thank you.”

Maxim Jakubowski, Chair of the CWA, said: “C J Sansom has proven himself to be the modern master of the historical thriller, regardless of periods. Equally at ease evoking sixteenth century England, Spain in the aftermath of its Civil War or even an alternate post-WW2 Britain, he weaves a web of compelling reality around his characters and brings the past to life like no other, making him a splendid and deserved addition to the prestigious ranks of Diamond Dagger winners.”

Published in 2003, Dissolution was an immediate bestseller, and critical success. Inspector Morse creator Colin Dexter called it ‘extraordinarily impressive’, while PD James described it as ‘remarkable’.

This success sparked the bestselling Shardlake series, set in the reign of Henry VIII and following the sixteenth-century lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake and his assistant Jack Barak.

Now running to well over four million copies in print, it is one of the most successful crime series of all time.

After Dissolution came Dark Fire, which won the 2005 Crime Writers’ Association Historical Dagger.

He has also written a thriller, Winter in Madrid, set in Spain in 1940 in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

The CWA Diamond Dagger is selected from nominations provided by CWA members. The award recognises authors whose crime writing careers have been marked by sustained excellence, and who have made a significant contribution to the genre.

CJ Sansom joins icons of the genre who have been recognised with the accolade, including Ruth Rendell, Lee Child, Ann Cleeves, Ian Rankin, PD James, Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, Lindsey Davis, Peter Lovesey, John Le Carré and Martina Cole.

The Diamond Dagger is announced before the annual CWA Dagger Awards, dubbed the ‘Oscars of the crime genre’, due to be awarded this June.

HISTORICALS: Stepping into the Past - Crafting the Historical Mystery: MWA NorCal

Mystery Writers of America NorCal continues panels and events celebrating Mystery Month. All events are free. Please register. 

Wednesday, October 20
HISTORICALS: Stepping into the Past – Crafting the Historical Mystery
Via Zoom; advance registration required
5 PM Pacific Time

Historical: of, relating to, or having the character of history; History: a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events.

How are readers transported into the past through novels? Join us, on Zoom, for this discussion to hear how historical mysteries are imbued with vibrant descriptions of the culture and consciousness of the past. How life was lived in a different time and place, and how crimes were solved using only wit, wisdom, intelligence, and the technology at hand – which did not include cell phones or GPS!

Moderator: Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 28 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories. She has been a member of MWA since dinosaurs walked the earth, was president of the NorCal chapter for years, and is probably the only writer to have both an Edgar and an honorary doctorate in theology.

Panelists:

• Catriona McPherson is a crime-fiction writer over many genres: modern psychological thrillers, 1930s detective stories with a gently-born lady sleuth (After the Armistice Ball is the first); and comedies set in California.
• Ann Parker earned degrees in Physics and English Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. Her award-winning Silver Rush historical mystery series is set in the 1880s silver boomtown of Leadville, Colorado, and features Silver Queen Saloon owner Inez Stannert. The first in the series, Silver Lies, won the Willa Literary Award for Historical Fiction and the Colorado Gold Award and was a finalist for the Bruce Alexander Historical Mystery Award as well as for the Western Writers Association Spur Award for Best Novel of the West. It was chosen a best mystery of the year by Publishers Weekly and the Chicago Tribune.
• Michael J. Cooper immigrated to Israel in 1966 and lived in Jerusalem during the last year the city was divided between Israel and Jordan. He studied and traveled in the region for eleven years and graduated from medical school in Tel Aviv. Cooper now lives in Northern California.
• Priscilla Royal is the author of several books in the Prioress Eleanor and Brother Thomas medieval mystery series, grew up in British Columbia and earned a BA in World Literature at San Francisco State University where she discovered the beauty of medieval literature.

HISTORICAL MYSTERIES II: Mystery Readers Journal (37:2)

Mystery Readers Journal: Historical Mysteries II (Volume 37:2// Summer 2021) is now available as PDF and hardcopy. If you're a PDF subscriber, you should have received download instructions. Hard copy subscription copies should arrive soon. PDF Contributor Copies will go out tomorrow. Don't forget, Historical Mysteries I (37:1) is still available. Thanks to everyone who contributed to this issue.

Historical Mysteries II

Volume 37, No. 2, Summer 2021

Buy this back issue! Available in hardcopy or as a downloadable PDF.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ARTICLES

• Joe Gores’ Dashiell Hammett by Catherine Accardi
• Ireland in the 1930s and 40s in Michael Russell’s Stefan Gillespie Novels by David Clark
• History, Mystery & the Female Protagonist by Vinnie Hansen
• Megan Abbott and the Evolution of Noir by Sean Day
• Epochal or Historical? It’s Still a Mystery! by Chiara Giacobbe
• Music Defines a Decade by Sandra Murphy

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!

• Not Another 1920s Mystery by Saffron Amatti
• The Primary Reasons I Like Primary Sources by Anne Louise Bannon
• Keeping it Real: The Challenge of Writing a Strong Historical Heroine by Mally Becker
• The Case of the Missing River-Map by J. F. Benedetto
• Who’s Hiding In That Ancient House? by Cordelia Frances Biddle
• Mysteries Set in Places with History by Suzanne J. Bratcher
• Keeping it Fresh: Writing a Long Running Historical Series by Emily Brightwell
• Searching for the Roots of History by Rebecca Cantrell
• Hands, Hearts and History by Charles Colley
• “And Put a Crime in It…” by Ruth Downie
• Excavations of Violence: Why History Makes the Best Mystery by Mariah Fredericks
• Should I Tinker with the Facts? by Jim Fusilli
• The Art and Madness of Writing Historical Mystery Novels by Harald Gilbers
• Pirates Make Unreliable Witnesses by Steve Goble
• “Historical Fiction” Is an Oxymoron by Hal Glatzer
• Writing the Stories I Love to Read by Anna Lee Huber
• Travelling Through Time with Sherlock Holmes by Robert J. Harris
• The Mystery Inside “The Baptism” by Gerald Everett Jones
• A Lady and a Swordsman by Kathleen Marple Kalb
• History as a Red Herring by Ron Katz
• It’s Not My Fault I Write Historical Mysteries by Ken Kuhlken
• Hunting Hitler in Hollywood by Susan Elia MacNeal
• My Family Secret: An Eyewitness to India’s Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 by Nev March
• What’s Really Inside the Carnival in Not Like Us by Darrin McGraw and Robert McGraw
• Imagining History: Writing Death on the Homefront by Frances McNamara
• Accidental Chronicler by Catriona McPherson
• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mystery by Timothy Miller
• Writing What You Don’t Know But Can Research by Sandra Murphy
• San Francisco’s Cliff House: The History (and the Mystery) by Ann Parker
• The Art of Creating an Historical Heroine by Andrea Penrose
• A Talking Snake and Other Mysteries by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer
• Two Authors in Search of Ideas by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
• Haunted by History by Erika Robuck
• The Responsibilities of Historical Fiction by Kelli Stanley
• The Thousand Piece Puzzle by Susan Tornga
• Recreating the Past by Sylvia Maultash Warsh
• Closer Than You Think by Clare Whitfield
• An Unlikely Home to Criminal Debuts by Gabriel Valjan
• Helen of Troy—Just Another Pretty Face? by N. S. Wikarski
• The Past Isn’t Dead, It Isn’t Even Past by Kenneth Wishnia
• From True Crime to Historical Mystery by W.A. Winter

COLUMNS

• Mystery in Retrospect: Reviews by Benjamin L. Clark, Lesa Holstine, Peter Handel, Amy Renshaw, L.J. Roberts, Lucinda Surber
• Children’s Hour: Historical Mysteries by Gay Toltl Kinman
• Crime Seen: History Mystery Around the World by Kate Derie
• Real History Mysteries by Cathy Pickens
• In Short: History Mystery by Marv Lachman
• From the Editor’s Desk by Janet A. Rudolph

***

SUBSCRIBE to Mysteries Readers Journal for 2021. 

Themes in 2021: History Mysteries 1; History Mysteries 2; Texas; Cold Cases. 

Call for articles: We're looking for reviews, articles, and Author! author! essays. Review: 50-150 words, articles, 500-1000 words. Author Essays: 500-1000 words, first person, upclose and personal about yourself, your books, and the "theme" connection. Deadline for Texas: July 20, 2021.  

Send queries to Janet Rudolph: janet @ mysteryreaders . org

Through the Past, Darkly: Guest Post by William Shaw

Play With Fire is set in London in 1969, the era when everyone used typewriters and carbon paper. It was written on a Mac.

I like to think about that difference sometimes between then and now. I imagine a room full of beat-hardened constables from London’s Metropolitan Police one-finger typing, fight-scabbed hands angrily stabbing the keys, one at a time.

Back then, the Metropolitan Police force of the late sixties was staffed with men from a totally different era; it was a force that was institutionally corrupt and contained more than a few officers who thought nothing of fabricating evidence to convict whoever they assumed was guilty. This was a force in which the newly formed Drug Squad would later be discovered to be selling drugs they’d confiscated back to drug dealers. As for procedure, in those days there was almost no forensic evidence gathered at a crime scene beyond finger prints. Officers would happily trample mob-handed all over the evidence.

Play With Fire is also set in an era 20 years before the demise of the Soviet Union, which nobody could ever imagine collapsing back then. It seemed monolithic; unstoppable.

The book features a real-life spy exchange that happened that year - members of the infamous Communist Portland Spy Ring were exchanged for an unfortunate British lecturer who had been caught in Russia with anti-Soviet leaflets. The KGB spy ring, who were connected to the Rosenbergs in New York, worked with short wave radio and microdots to pass on secrets about British nuclear submarines. The Cold War was very present in London around that time; it was just one of the facts of life along with red phone boxes, thruppeny bits and double-decker buses.

On one level it feels like 1969 was such a long time ago. And yet, the book also opens at the Rolling Stones Hyde Park concert of that year, when Mick Jagger recited Shelly and released thousands of white butterflies into the air as a memorial for ex-Rolling Stone Brian Jones.

Jones had died in a swimming pool only a few days later and the mystery surrounding the 27-year-old guitarist’s death is part of my story too. Was he deliberately killed, or was it just what happens to young people if they take too many drugs, drink too much and then decide to swim on their own?

On the set list that day in Hyde Park were songs like Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Satisfaction, Honky Tonk Women and Sympathy For The Devil, songs you can still hear any day on the radio, songs that still sound as alive and modern and abrasive as they did fifty years ago. In amongst that old world was the soundtrack for our new one, shiny, new and outrageously arrogant.

That’s what I enjoyed, writing this book and the others in this series so much. In some senses 1969 was such a long time ago, and yet in others it was a year that was still very present in our lives. There was a war going on in 1969, and it wasn’t just in Vietnam. The clunky old certainties of the post-war world were doing battle with blaring, cocky individualism of the rock generation; and that makes for a great backdrop for any crime story.

***

William Shaw is an award-winning music journalist and the author of several non-fiction books including Westsiders: Stories of the Boys in the Hood. Prior to becoming a crime writer, he worked at the post-punk magazine ZigZag and a journalist for The Observer, The New York Times, Wired, Arena, and The Face. His latest novel Play With Fire is a gripping police thriller set in the ever-intriguing world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Think Prime Suspect 1973 meets a throwback episode of Law and Order: SVU set in the ’60s!

Ten Fun Things I Learned about Prohibition Cocktails: Guest Post by Susanna Calkins

Susanna Calkins:
Ten fun things I learned about Prohibition cocktails when writing my new series

When I first started writing my new series, The Speakeasy Murders, set in 1920s Chicago, I knew I was going to have to start doing some cocktail research. I didn’t know much about cocktails other that they pre-dated Prohibition, but became popular in the 1920s. I also knew that juices, sugar, honey, fruits, spices, herbs, and eggs were all added to different liquors to mask the terrible taste of the swill they were imbibing.

So as any good writer would do, I thought I should do authentic research on cocktails. And how better to do this than vowing to try one hundred Prohibition-era cocktails by the time my book came out. Gin Rickeys, Bees’ Knees, Aviations, Gin Blossoms...I was ready! But, I got through about 35 concoctions and hit the absinthe-based ones and I basically gave up on that ridiculous quest. So instead I turned to 1920s-era newspapers, where I learned ten intriguing things about Prohibition-era cocktails:

1. Cocktails make women too masculine! Early on in the Prohibition, women were warned to “shun liquor or have beards.” By 1923, there was a sense among some scientists that “the number of women having slight growths of hair on their lips and chins has increased 10 per cent....The opinion of the majority is that the increasing masculinism [sic] of modern women is making them like men.” Right! Blame the cocktail for social change.

2. Fresh air and a new hat are the only cocktails women need! Contemporary syndicated columnist Antoinette Donnelly wrote regular features on health and beauty, with headlines like: “Imbibe plenty of fresh air cocktails,” “Cosmetics act as mental cocktail to lots of people,” and my favorite, “A new hat is often just the cocktail a weary girl needs.” Why have real cocktails (which will only make you masculine), when you can be rejuvenated by your own beauty or a walk in the park?

3. Children will be damaged if they witness parent’s “Whoopie” (cocktail drinking)! Paraphrasing an expert on parents and children, the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote in 1929: “The child, no matter how young, knows it when the parents have gone to cocktail parties and such.” Way to blame the parents!

4. Cocktails can test true love! Throughout the decade, important questions about cocktails regularly appeared in the advice columns. After Doris Blake posed to her readers, “Is it so clever for girls living in an apartment to keep a gin cupboard stocked for “callers?” Two young women explained, rather wisely, that “If you want to find out what stuff friends are made of, put them on a dry evening. The good ones will stick, but watch the rest flee.” Greater wisdom just cannot be found.

5. Cocktail shakers banned from the movies! In 1927, Will H. Hayes, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Exhibitors’ Association of America, proclaimed that “no picture will thereby be allowed to enter any shot of drinking scenes, manufacture or sale of liquor, or undue effects of liquor, which are not necessary parts of the story.” Clearly just the sight of a cocktail shaker could drive a person to drink. And distribute. And sell.

6. Cocktails cause death! For the first seven years of Prohibition, it was common for people to illegally re-distill woodgrain alcohol (methanol intended for industrial purposes), making it reasonably palatable. Though drug stores carried signs warning people not to drink woodgrain alcohol, they also posted signs above emetics in case someone did anyway. So there were occasional deaths from “bad hooch,” which people seemed to take in stride. This attitude changed in 1927, however, when the U.S. government created a new formula for industrial alcohol, seeking to deliberately denature the alcohol with a new chemical formula that basically doubled the poison in the substance. Massive fatalities resulted from the poisoned hooch over the next few years, with 33 people dying in 3 days in New York in 1928, but the formula wasn’t changed. The U.S. government was essentially condoning and supporting murder.

7. Cocktails bring about “war on chemists!” In 1927, soon after the U.S. government made the change to the woodgrain alcohol mentioned above, Prohibition agents (“Drys”) began to target chemists who were aiding and abetting bootleggers. As the Acting Prohibition Commissioner explained, “We have found that some of the chemists derive much of their income from the practice of testing liquor for the bootleg trade.” Essentially, they would rather people die than be allowed to test the alcohol for poison.

8. Cocktails cause another Great War! For years, the European elite spoke disdainfully of cocktails, most likely alarmed by the pernicious spread of the “cocktail disease from America” through the continent. As one famed French columnist noted, “These drinks have aromas like that of old vegetables, cheese boxes, etc. that are displayed in the refuse cans on a Paris morning.” But in 1928 a number of newspapers across Italy wrote simultaneous condemnations of cocktails, which may have been more of a comment on Mussolini’s hold on the press, than actual refutation of the drink.

9. Cocktail-related items made great gifts! In 1928, newsmen across New York noted how the new dry laws had caused stores to fill their windows with “Prohibition by-products,” just in time for the Christmas holiday. The “thirsty-minded” were enticed to buy such things as automatic cocktail shakers, collapsible spoons, funnels, corkscrews, liquor testing devices, “leather encased hip flasks to survive a taxi crash,” and travelling bags fitted up like a miniature bar. Shoppers could also buy supplies to make their own hooch, including hops, grapes, and barrels. They could even buy tailored clothes with hidden pockets for their flasks. Who doesn’t need a collapsible spoon?

10. Oh, and the cocktail napkin was invented in the 1920s. No one seems to know when or why, but I’m assuming they needed something to spit their drinks into when the rotgut overran the juices and sugars. 

***

Susanna Calkins, author of The Speakeasy Murders and award-winning Lucy Campion historical series, holds a PhD in history and teaches at the college level. Her historical mysteries have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark and Agatha awards, among many others, and The Masque of a Murderer received a Macavity. Originally from Philadelphia, Calkins now lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two sons. Learn more at http://www.susannacalkins.com/.

Benjamin Franklin Solves a Murder: Guest post by John Harmon McElroy

John Harmon McElroy, author of Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker Murders (Penmore Press, 2017) is a professor emeritus of the University of Arizona, where he created and taught a course called Literature of the Early Republic that included Franklin's Autobiography. In addition to Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker Murders, the first novel in a series featuring Benjamin Franklin as a detective, McElroy has authored four books on American cultural history and has been a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at universities in Spain and Brazil. (More at www.benfranklindetective.com) 

John Harmon McElroy:
Benjamin Franklin Solves A Murder 

Sometimes a work of fiction can be a more effective way of conveying truth than a history book. Biographers are committed to representing the reality of history. Writers of historical fiction have the somewhat different goal of creating the illusion of a past experience. Through my mystery novel I give readers not only “a tale that becomes more intriguing as it progresses,” but also an experience of Benjamin Franklin, the most versatile genius in that remarkable group known as America's Founders.

But, you might ask, why did I choose the form of a murder mystery as a way of portraying Franklin? Aside from being a lifelong fan of mysteries myself, it seemed to me that a mystery would be the best way to provide a close-up view of Franklin – his modus operandi, his genius, his charm, his altruism. Also, I’m convinced that more and more readers will come to admire and appreciate Franklin when they meet him “in person,” readers who might not be inclined to pick up a history book but who do enjoy a mystery that “pull[s] you forward, page by page.”

In his life Franklin did many different things. There was nothing that caught his interest that he didn’t engage with in depth. Have a kite you’re flying on the banks of a mile-wide pond? – Why not see if your kite can pull you across? (It did – and as a boy Benjamin Franklin became the first windsurfer!) Curious about the powerful ocean current known as the Gulf Stream? – Why not take temperatures to locate its eastward-moving power to speed the passage of ships to Europe? (In his eight Atlantic crossings Franklin made the first systematic study of the Gulf Stream.) Think you and your fellow tradesmen could benefit from access to more books than you can individually afford? – Why not convince the members of your club to pool their money to buy books? (Thus inventing the lending library.) And always, in pursuing his interests, he had some practical result in mind.

Franklin was also an internationally famous diplomat. His ability to charm the French into supporting the American Revolution during his nine years at the court of Louis the Sixteenth made possible the military aid – supplies, and French troops and warships – that was vital to securing U.S. independence from Britain. Then, at the war's end, he negotiated the peace settlement (the Treaty of Paris), which defined the boundaries of the United States of America.

But it was Franklin’s achievements as a world-class scientist that made me see him as a detective. After all, a detective’s procedures in gathering clues and drawing conclusions are similar to those a scientist employs in making observations and formulating a testable hypothesis about a phenomenon of nature.

In Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker Murders, all these characteristics, and more, come into play, including Franklin’s spectacular lapse of judgment in the story’s climactic showdown. (He wasn’t perfect.)

The mystery unfolds in the City of Brotherly Love when it was the largest English-speaking city in the world after London. Franklin has just come back from France only to find that Jacob Maul, the Quaker stonecutter who laid the foundations for his mansion, Franklin Court, has been jailed on suspicion of having strangled his housekeeper. A lot of circumstantial evidence points to Maul's guilt. After all, this is the second female corpse with bruise marks to the throat that has turned up on his property. But Franklin's knowledge of Maul’s character, and his noticing a coincidence that everyone else has overlooked, convince him of the Quaker's innocence.

However, in 1785 Franklin is 79 and must recruit a younger man to do the legwork for the investigation. Franklin requires a man of honor to be his assistant to keep his role secret, lest Franklin acquire an unwanted reputation for fixing his neighbors’ problems. We see Franklin’s diplomatic skills unfurl as he attempts to persuade Capt. James Jamison, a wounded veteran of the just-concluded American Revolution, to collaborate with him. Franklin’s humor, his positive outlook on life, and his bonhomie emerge and are on display throughout.

During the ins and outs of the investigation, Franklin also demonstrates the skill in making deductions from physical evidence that allowed him to solve some of the basic mysteries concerning the nature of electricity. This accomplishment prompted Scotland’s St. Andrews University to confer an honorary doctor’s degree on him. After that honor in 1759, this youngest son of a Boston candle maker, who only had two years of formal schooling, was always addressed as “Dr. Franklin.”

The secondary characters in this historical mystery, and the mystery itself, are fictional. But the details about Franklin’s life, interests, and achievements are true. Many readers say I’ve succeeded in providing an experience of Franklin and his times through a story that makes the reader “anxious to find out what happened.” One reader wrote, “I [saw] the total picture in my head of Franklin and the time period […], and I lived it as I would if watching a PBS Masterpiece Mystery. May I have another?”

You may! Benjamin Franklin and the Innocent Duelist, the next narrative in the “Benjamin Franklin, Detective” series, is written and should be out in time for Xmas.