Category Archives: murder mysteries

Families

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As I looked around the table at Christmas dinner, and saw people who had not spoken to one another for years, I thought of how complicated families could be.

In Murder, Sweet Murder, I set the mystery against Lydia’s family, but Will Rees’s is no less difficult.

Lydia, estranged from her father and step-mother, left her family years ago. Her father is a wealthy Boston merchant engaged in the Triangle Trade. He owns a distillery that distills molasses into rum as well a fleet of ships that run slaves from Africa.

Lydia cannot accept her father’s profession and after some problems in her personal live, runs away. She lands at Zion, a Shaker community in Maine. In Murder, Sweet Murder I bring her back to Boston, and her family. She is no more tolerant of her father’s profession now than she was then.

Rees’s father was an abusive alcoholic who died by falling off a wagon in a drunken stupor. Rees is not an alcoholic but he makes other mistakes with his children. Before the action begins in A Simple Murder, David, Rees’s oldest son runs away from home, and takes refuge in Zion with the Shakers. Rees had left David (he would say his father abandoned him) with Caroline and her husband. When Rees returns home and recovers the farm, sending Caroline’s family packing, she never forgives him.

In A Devil’s Cold Dish, Caroline does her very best to destroy her brother and his family.

As the stories go on, and Rees’s history unfolds, his family expands. But it also changes. By the time of Murder, Sweet Murder, Jerusha, Rees’s oldest daughter, wants to leave home for school. David and Simon have already left for a farm in a distant town.

Families are complicated, even in fiction.

Rum

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Rum was the lubricant and the fuel for the engine of commerce leading up to the American Revolution and a bit beyond. It was a favorite drink of the slavers, the slaves, and pretty much everyone else. Called Nelson’s blood (as well as a number of less flattering names), rum made up part of the British sailors’ pay.

What is rum? Rum is distilled from the molasses left over from sugarcane. The cane has particular requirement and cannot be grown in the temperate lands. It must be grown with lots of sun and water. It also needs intensive labor to cut, cart and process the cane under the tropical sun. A clear and distinct link between the growing demand for sugar and slavery can be drawn because, as plantations were turned over to cane, the needs of a large work force demanded more workers – Slaves.

The slaves needed to be fed. New England ships brought dried cod, picked up the molasses for transport to the distilleries in New England. The resulting drink (called among other things, screech, kill-devil, demon water) was put in casks and sent to Africa to purchase more slaves and also to Great Britain. This was the previously discussed Triangle Trade.

Ironically, the long trips over the ocean, stored in casks, made the rum more drinkable.

Although rum was still consumed after the War for Independence, as mentioned in Murder, Sweet Murder, it was falling out of favor as the new country’s beverage. Whiskey, from rye grown in Western Pennsylvania, and distilled in the country, was considered more patriotic and as such became the drink of choice.

Currently Reading week of November 21.

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With the holidays, I had less time than usual to read. Still, I managed to finish 2 books and part of a third.

Staging is Murder by Grace Topping is a charming cozy. The amateur detective is a home stager whose assistant is accused of the murder. A lovely old Victorian provided the setting – and don’t we all wish we lived in such a magnificent place. This is a series and I plan to read the rest of it.

I regularly read fantasy and science fiction. One of the suggestions that came up on my Amazon feed was The Witches of Dark Root by April Aasheim. Dark Root, a small town in the Pacific Northwest, is one of the last places on earth that keeps the darkness at bay. But now the circle had cracked. Sasha, coven leader, is ill. Her four daughters have scattered. running away from home and the control of their mother. But when news of Sasha’s illness reaches the daughters, they return; first Merry, the eldest, then Maggie, the daughter with the most power, and finally the other two. I really enjoyed this supernatural suspense novel. Since several problems remain to be resolved, I plan to read the rest of the series.

Finally, I am enjoying the latest David Rosenfelt: Best in Snow. When Andy Carpenter’s golden retriever digs up a pile of snow in the park, she discovers the body of the mayor. Andy’s friend Vince persuades him to take the case (Carpenter is a lawyer) and he becomes convinced the suspect the police have in custody has been set up. Rosenfelt’s mysteries are always fun. The characters are interesting and Carpenter is amusing. This one is also appropriate to the season since it is set just before Christmas.

The pitfalls of language (for a Historical fiction writer)

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Usually, when I write about language, I write about idioms. There is nothing like a dated idiom to drop into your story and stop the action. And idioms are tricky. Some, even some we use all the time, are ancient. I think of ‘strike while the iron is hot’ which, although phrased different according to the century, has been around for hundreds of years.

But some idioms enjoy a brief spurt of popularity and are never heard from again. When was the last time you heard ‘Like the bees knees’? And of course, new idioms are always being created.

In this post, though, I am going to discuss a few words. They can be even trickier than the idioms. We use our familiar language frequently without thought, as I was reminded recently. And believe me, if you add an anachronism to your novel, someone is sure to know.

So the first word is clue. That has to be new, right? Probably created during the thirties, with Agatha Christie. No, my friends. Clue is very old, from Middle English, where it was spelled clew and meant ball of thread. The modern spelling is from the mid-1620s. Gradually, the meaning changed to it points the way.

Well, what about okay? Now, there is a word that has spread across the globe. If you watch foreign language movies, the word okay comes up regularly. I was told many years ago that it originated in an American Indian language – Choctaw to be exact – because missionaries signed letters Okeh. Okay, it turns out, was an editorial joke, created in 1839. It was popularized by Martin Van Buren.

Finally, hello. Who could question hello? Well, this word is a newbie. It may be an alteration of hallo from the High German, It was used for the first documented time in 1834. Thomas Alva Edison is credited with its use as a telephone greeting.

Even our common language lays traps for the unwary writer!

Goodreads Giveaway

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The pub date for Murder on Principle is August 3rd, although I have heard that many people have already received the book.

I set up a giveaway on Goodreads so join in and win a free copy.

The reviews so far have all been very good to great!

Murder, Sweet Murder – Will Rees number 11

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I spent most of my vacation working on edits for the next Will Rees: Murder, Sweet Murder.

It is a little amusing to be working so hard on the next in the series when Murder on Principle will not be published until August 3rd.

In this book, Rees and Lydia journey to Boston to investigate an accusation leveled against Lydia’s father. I wrote this one at the request of readers who wanted to know more about Lydia’s past.

I am so excited to present the cover of Murder, Sweet Murder. No publication date yet.

The Fugitive Slave Law – 1793

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I associated the Fugitive Slave Law with the Civil War. The truth is, however, the first iteration of the law was signed into effect in 1793, long before I would have guessed. It is important to remember that many of the founding fathers, including George Washington, were slave owners.

In Death in the Great Dismal,

when Rees and Lydia rescue their friends Tobias and Ruth, they were breaking the law. Although both Tobias and Ruth had both been born free in Maine, they were abducted and sold into slavery. (The slave takers frequently took any person of color, born free or not, for sale in the South. Occasionally, white children were stolen as well.)

Not only were escaped people subject to recapture, anyone who obstructed the slave takers were considered in violation of the law. Moreover, any child born to an enslaved mother was also considered to be enslaved. The prevailing custom was one drop of black blood meant that person was considered black, no matter how light-skinned. Rees and Lydia, therefore, could have been in serious trouble if they had been caught.

The full text of the Act is available from the Library of Congress (and online) in the Annals of Congress of the 2ndCongress, 2nd Session, during which the proceedings and debates took place from November 5, 1792 to March 2, 1793. 

The appropriate sections are 3 and 4.

By the end of the American Revolution all of the Northern states had abolished slavery or made provision to do so. (The United States abolished the slave trade in 1808.) However, fugitives could and were returned to the Southern states per the Fugitive Slave Act by men whose profession, if you will, was capturing escapees.

 This law was further strengthened in 1850 at the request of the slave states. One of the elements most annoying to Northerners was the three-fifths rule that counted every five slaves as three people and therefore gave the slave states much more representation in Congress. Although there were abolitionists prior to 1850, the revised law caused a tremendous increase in people who identified as anti-slavery.

The term Underground Railroad did not come into common use until the construction of actual railroads became widespread. An abolitionist newspaper published a cartoon in 1844 that pictured a rail car packed with fugitives heading for Canada. Use of ‘conductor’ and other railroad terms came into broader use after the 1850 law. 

Midwives and Midwifery

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During the course of the Will Rees mysteries, midwives have made appearances in several books. Lydia herself has had occasion to require the services of a midwife and (spoiler alert) will need her again.

Midwives have a long history. There are references to midwives in Ancient Greek and Roman texts as well as in the Bible.

In the seventeenth century, however, the reliance on midwives began to diminish. Male doctors began to claim they were the proper individuals to help women deliver their babies. The men were educated while the women were ignorant. (And that was the kindest insult. They were also accused of being lazy, dirty and drunk.)

In A Midwife’s Tale; the Life of Martha Ballard, 1785 – 1812, edited by Laura Thatcher Ulrich, the midwife’s perception was much different. Most of these women had borne children themselves (although not all) and they were very experiences. Usually a younger woman would shadow an older midwife (it was not always a formal apprenticeship) to learn the necessary skills.

The male doctors, although they believed themselves far better at this, did not have the years of practice. In the above autobiography, there is a harrowing scene in which the male doctor takes the baby in a breech birth out in pieces. He had not learned to massage the mothers abdomen to turn the baby for the birth

The male doctors were also guilty of spreading puerperal fever. They would not wash their hands after dissecting corpses, going immediately to deliver babies. This has been well documented.

The account by Martha Ballard illustrates both the difficulties and the rewards of this profession. She leaves home at all hours and during all weathers to deliver babies. But she is far better paid for her skills than she would have been at any other type of ‘women’s work’,

It was her proud claim that, during all her years of practice, she lost only three babies.

Some history of the Great Dismal Swamp

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When Rees and Lydia accompany their friend Tobias to the Great Dismal Swamp to rescue his wife, they do so as much to mend their own relationship as to help a friend.  (Marriage is challenging and Will and Rees’s relationship was tested in A Circle of Dead Girls.)

The swamp proves to be a more challenging environment, and the community in which Ruth has taken refuge, more exotic than they could ever have guessed.

            From the 1700s right up to the Civil War, fugitives from the neighboring plantations fled into the swamp to escape bondage. The swamp, which was more than a million acres at that time, (estimates range from one million to three million acres) was and is still a harsh environment. The Great Dismal has shrunk to 112 thousand acres. A Wildlife Sanctuary, it is home to deer, a large population of black bears, bobcats, more than 200 species of birds and many insects. (Insect repellent is a must.) It is a peat bog; items dropped on the thick water-soaked peat can disappear without a trace in a manner of minutes.

Murderous March 2021

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The conference begins tomorrow at 1 pm. Free but registration is required.

FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2021

(Note: All times are Eastern)

1.00 – 2.00 pm

Pitch Workshop – moderator Jenny Milchman *

What Agents Want & How to Give It to Them
Figuring out how to woo an agent or small press editor can be as puzzling as a good mystery. In this informal session, writers will receive an overview of the publishing process today, learn how to describe their book and themselves as writers, and discover the secret to a difficult-to-turn-down pitch.

2.15 – 3.45 pm

Master Class I – Sujata Massey (Guest of Honor) *

A Journalistic Approach to Writing a Novel: How to Add the Right Details Without Becoming an Encyclopedia
Sujata will break down the journalism techniques she uses for creating pictures on the page, weaving real facts with the fictitious. She’ll also give tips on how to cultivate valuable sources in government and academia and the importance of sensitive representation of characters with different cultural backgrounds.

4.00 – 5.30 pm

Master Class II – Alison Gaylin (Special Guest)

Creating Lead Characters: Series versus Standalone
From hardboiled crime-solvers to noir antiheroes to the unreliable narrators of psychological suspense, compelling lead characters are a key element in crime fiction. We’ll discuss how to create protagonists that are multi-faceted, surprising and real – whether they’re driving one story or an ongoing series.

6.00 – 7.00 pm

Meet-the-Authors Cocktail Hour
Authors will introduce their series or latest book and present a brief reading. Bring your favorite drink!

Saturday, begins 10 am EST.

10.00 am                     Welcome and Conference Overview by Frankie Y. Bailey, President,  Mavens of Mayhem

10.30 – 11.30 am         Historical Mysteries Panel – Shakers, Quakers, Revolutionaries, and Depression-era cops. Journey with us to exciting mysteries of the past

11.45 am – 12.45 pm      Short Stories and Other Shorts Panel – No matter where you are on your writing journey, short fiction presents an opportunity to try something new, refine your craft, and have the satisfaction of writing “the end” after just 10,000 words. Tune in as these authors share their insights and inspirations behind writing short fiction, and tips on getting started and where to submit.

1.00 – 2.00 pm              A Conversation with our special guests Sujata Massey and Alison Gaylin 

Don’t miss this lively and informative chat with our honored guests.     Moderator – Elaine Viets *

2.15 – 3.15 pm             Gothic Romance and Romantic Suspense Panel – Step away from the comfort of your armchair and flirt with danger as this panel delves into the darkly alluring genres of Gothic Romance and Romantic Suspense.

3.30 – 4.30 pm             Police Procedurals: Fact or Fiction Panel – Ripped from the headlines!  Go behind the scenes and learn how to turn your police procedurals into page-turners as four experts from the field talk about how murder is handled in real life.

4.45 – 5.45 pm             Pathways to Publication Roundtable – This isn’t your grandmother’s publishing world! Getting a book published has changed drastically over the past decades.  Join this panel as they discuss the variety of paths to publication available to authors today.

5.45 pm                       Wrap-up

PITCHES

Publisher Harriette Sackler (Level Best Books) and agent Josh Getzler (HG Literary) will take pitches at a time and date TBA. Indicate on your registration form if you wish to pitch your manuscript. You will be contacted.