Category Archives: murder mysteries

The Tarot – and Will Rees

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In A Circle of Dead Girls, Will Rees meets a character who uses tarot cards for divination.

I’ve gotten a couple of questions about whether Tarot cards were even around then. Weren’t they all the rage in the sixties?

The cards were actually popularized (for the first time!) in the 1400s and were used as, well, playing cards. There were four suits. The ‘trump’ cards were added later. It is thought that tarot cards came from Egypt.

From the deck I used.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the tarot cards were being used for divination. The first deck specifically created for divination was produced in 1789. There have been successive waves of interest since then and yes, the late sixties saw saw a surge.

So it is perfectly possible that Rees would have seen a deck of tarot cards, especially from someone of Italian extraction.

Why did I choose to use the tarot and the more occult use of tarot? Will Rees, after all, is a character with his feet firmly rooted in the practical. Did I include a supernatural element to this mystery? After all, Rees is astonished by the accuracy of some of Bambola’s readings. Although I left the door open for that interpretation, I chose that mechanism to show something of Bambola’s character. She believes in the readings but ignores what they say to her.

Goodreads Giveaway – A Circle of Dead Girls

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Although I planned to schedule the giveaway to hit just before the release date – March 3 – the book is available now!

So sign up for you copy on Goodreads.

The circus has come to town. Rees drives in to see a performance but sees his old nemesis, Magistrate Hanson, instead. Returning home, Rees meets up with a group of Shakers who are searching for a missing girl. Rees agrees to help search – and they find the girl’s murdered body in a field.

Upcoming events

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So excited to announce several events.

On Sunday, January 12, I will be speaking at the East Fishkill Public Library at 1:30.

In February, February 8 to be exact, I will be speaking at Goshen Public Library.

Also, in preparation for the release of the next Will Rees: A Circle of Dead Girls,

I will be holding a Giveaway for Simply Dead throughout January on Goodreads.

In February, look for a giveaway for A Circle of Dead Girls.

Another

    Bald Cypress

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    The bald cypress used to be one of the most common trees in the swamp but from logging and other causes the numbers diminished tone replaced by red maple and other deciduous trees.

    Bald cypress is itself deciduous and drops its leaves/needles in the fall. They are a beautiful and vivid orange with a hint of purple. A concerted effort to re-establish the bald cypress in the swamp was begun. One of the most interesting and, for me, creepiest feature of the bald cypress is something called cypress knees. No one knows why they exist but the theory is that they help bring oxygen to the roots.

    The orange surface is the dropped needles. All the small trunks are cypress knees.
    I found these knees totally creepy. There are hundreds and hundreds of them and to me it looks like an alien life form (the pod people or something) taking over.

    The Great Dismal Swamp, Again

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    Next March, A Circle of Dead Girls will be released. It has already been released in the UK.

    The Will Rees Mystery that will come out after, probably next summer, is titled Death in the Great Dismal. As one may guess, this mystery takes Will and Lydia to the Great Dismal Swamp in Virginia.

    Since I always find it easier to imagine my characters in the location in which the mystery takes place, I have visited the swamp again. What an amazing place!

    Loblolly pines. Even in the winter, when the leaves have dropped, it is difficult to see through the vegetation. The pines grow on drier islands in the swamp. This is where the maroons, the escaped slaves, would have set up camps.
    One of the many streams in the swamp. The water is black. Tannin leaches from the roots of the cypress. Although the water is safe to drink, any fabric or lighter surface will be dyed brown by the water. Look closely. All the water ways are edges with the stubs of trees where the beavers have gnawed them down.
    Downed trees are everywhere. I describe this scene in my book, although Rees finds a clue at the water’s edge.

    Of tightrope walkers and more

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    One of the main characters in A Circle of Dead Girls is a tightrope walker, Called rope dancers, the tightrope walkers have been a feature of the circuses for centuries. The Romans called them funambulists.

    My rope dancer is nicknamed Bambola, a name that I borrowed from a famous Italian tightrope walker. These aerialists have always been popular acts. I imagine the excitement in a small farming community at seeing this act would have been high.

    Many of the rope dancers were women but not all. In fact, as the circuses traveled around, dynasties that were known for aerial acts formed and became famous in their own right.

    Will Rees and others in the audience of that time would not have seen an act that became arguably the most popular of all: the trapeze artists. The trapeze was developed from the tightrope; more accurately from a slack rope that the artist then hung from. The first tricks were done from a static trapeze; a rope that hung without moving. The flying trapeze was not invented until the mid-1800s by a young aerialist: Jules Leotard. He invented it by practicing over his father’s swimming pool.

    For many decades, the flying trapeze was one of these most popular acts ever.

    Circus Acrobats

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    Acrobats are another piece of the circus story that has a long history. The first known depictions of acrobats jugglers appeared about 5000 years ago, in Egypt, in the early dynastic period (3000 B.C.). The Egyptians developed a strong tradition of these arts and later taught them to the Greeks. They in turn taught the arts to the Romans.

    The Romans spread them throughout their Empire via itinerant troupes of performers.

    Acrobatics rose independently in China.

    Although the earliest performances had religious overtones, the entertainers soon realized the audiences enjoyed the performances as entertainment. This created tension with the religious powers, culminating in the Middle Ages who accused the performers of being in league with the devil. During the Reformation in England during the 1660s, all such forms of frivolity was forbidden.

    Clowns

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    When Philip Astley set up his equestrian show in England, he hired clowns to amuse the audiences between equestrian acts. Although those clown owed their history to Italy’s Commedia del’ Arte from the 16th century, with a little bit of court jester thrown in, the trickster character has a long long history. Folktales from around the world showcase the tricksters, sometimes amusingly and sometimes scarily.

    Although the more modern clowns are figures of fun, they did not start that way. (I think Stephen King really put his finger on an atavistic fear of clowns in IT. I wonder if it is part of the same psychology that makes zombies and vampires scary; something that is looks human, or once was human, but isn’t.) Even some of the characters who were supposed to be funny were also monsters. Think of Punch (from Punch and Judy) who beat his wife and murdered his children. I remember visiting the Taos reservation during a celebration. The clowns were punishers, running through the crowd and throwing people who had disobeyed customs or cultural norms into a pond of water. I was merely an onlooker and I was terrified.

    Clown from the Commedia was a buffoon, a foil to the sly Harlequin, but the two characters have been rolled together. According to Wikipedia, the word clown was first recorded in 1560 meaning boor, peasant. It took on the meaning of fool. Clowns have evolved from the fool to other characters. Think Emmett Kelly’s weary Willie, Charlie Chaplin’s tramp. Funny and Sad both.

    In any event, when Astley set up his circus, the first modern clown, Joseph Grimaldi, was so popular he became a star in his own right.

    Animals in the Circus

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    When we think of circuses, we usually think of exotic animals: lions and tigers and elephants.

    But the first animals that were used in the early circus in the United States were not those exotics (especially then). The first elephant l did not come to this country until 1794. One elephant was brought from the Orient (which covered India, China, Japan and more then) by the Salem merchants.

    No, most of the animals that would have been used in a circus were more homey. Dogs, pigs ( like the pig used by Billy the clown in A Circle of Dead Girls), and maybe bears. Horses were the stars for many years since the circus begun by Astley in England had begun as an equestrian show.

    Some of the primary sources I read quoted farm boys who went home after the circus and tried to train their farm horses to circus tricks.

    The Luddites

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    Calling someone a Luddite now is an accusation of being anti-technology and anti-progress.  The name comes from a group of protesters, weavers and other textile workers, in the 19thcentury who blackened their faces and broke into factories to destroy the new weaving and spinning machinery. They named themselves Luddites,  after King Ludd, the fictional leader.

    Their struggles resonate with me, first because Will Rees, my primary protagonist and detective, is a weaver in the late 18thcentury. He will lose his profession as the textile factories take over. (The first textile mill was built in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1814.) And second, because the fears of the textile workers – that the machinery would replace them – is being replicated today in a score of professions. The men who called themselves Luddites were not anti-machinery. They were fighting to maintain their livelihoods. 

    These textile workers had reason to worry. Prior to the invention of the weaving machines, weaving was a skilled occupation. Weavers underwent an apprenticeship of seven years before they could call themselves weavers and set up shop. With the transition to the machines, the time and energy invested in learning the skills for this profession was wasted. And unnecessary. The weaving machines were more efficient and they allowed for less skilled, and thus lower paid, workers. 

    Although the Luddites are remembered for the destruction of the machinery, they were not protesting the new equipment. Instead, they opposed the use of the machinery to sidestep labor practices that were standard at that time. As the men lost their jobs, the factory owners, to maximize their profits, employed women and children who were paid much less. Children as young as six worked 14 hours a day in the factories.

    The situation was slightly different in the United States. The population was smaller, for one thing, so there was not the same labor pool. To solve the problem Lowell hired young women, who became known as mill girls, between the ages of 15 and 35. He of course paid them less than men. (To his credit, he chose not to employ children.)

    In Great Britain the Government sided with the factory owners.  Machine breaking was made a capital crime. The Luddites clashed several times with British soldiers and groups of men, some part of the protest, some not, were swept up. The harsh sentences – execution and penal transportation – that were levied on those men found guilty of being Luddites quickly destroyed the movement. We are seeing similar dislocation today.