Meet Tito Amato, 18th-Century Opera Star and Sleuth

Tito Amato is a castrato singer, a divo of the 18th-century opera stage, who lives and works in Venice during the last few decades of the Republic’s tumultuous decline. The castration forced upon him as a young boy could easily have made Tito a bitter man, but in his case, the physical violation resulted in empathy for anyone wronged by a repressive, uncaring society. A friendless stranger, the Jews of the Venetian ghetto, a Carnival dwarf, a wise woman of the Old Religion, a murdered servant whose master would like to simply to forget her—Tito seeks justice for all.

Leave a comment below for a chance to win a trade paper copy of the first Tito Amato mystery, INTERRUPTED ARIA.

Susanne Alleyn: Buongiorno, Signor Amato. We’re grateful that you’ve been able to take a break from your busy rehearsal schedule to visit with us. Please tell us a little about your time and place.

Tito: I live in the Most Serene Republic of Venice in the mid-1700s. Although my ancient city once ferried Crusaders to the Holy Land and ruled the eastern Mediterranean like a seafaring queen, in my day Venice has been deserted by fortune. She is dying. Literally, she is sinking into the lagoon. Morally she is wasting herself in a maelstrom of pleasure and gaiety. Economically she survives by fleecing the foreigners who flock to our island to enjoy our musical and artistic treasures, our women, our gambling houses, and especially, our six-month Carnival. I believe you have a city that serves a similar function, though it is inexplicably located in the middle of a desert—Las Vegas.

SA: The practice of castrating young boys to make opera singers of them is abhorrent to most 21st-century readers. Could you tell us more about it?

Tito: Blame St. Paul: he is the one who first admonished women to keep silent in the churches. The rest followed according to the literal-minded logic of some boneheaded churchmen. Boy sopranos sang in church choirs, but their voices deepened after only a few years. Around the 16th century, it occurred to some clever voice master to preserve the angel voices by means of surgery. Later, when the new spectacle of opera became the reigning entertainment of the day, the public wanted to hear the same high, thrilling voices they enjoyed in church. My contemporaries find the castrato voice fascinating and compelling, the perfect expression of song in a culture that has developed artifice and illusion to a high art. My arias make women swoon and grown men weep.

Bev interjects: Tito also makes boatloads of money singing them. Not too shabby, eh?

SA: Is there anything about 18th-century Venice that would seem particularly familiar or relevant to readers of the early 21st century?

Tito: Carissima Bev, the chronicler of my adventures, has noted an unfortunate similarity. Like your world, my Venice is undergoing an economic decline. Our merchants once depended on lucrative trade routes to the Levant (your Middle East) and the Orient. The esteemed title La Serenissima conjured up visions of maritime superiority and political glory. Christopher Columbus’ historic voyage changed all that—trade gradually turned toward the West and Venice was left with scraps. Our merchants and aristocrats, who are one and the same,now take brutal, desperate measures to preserve their wealth and status. I’ve faced cynical, greedy villains who’ve sabotaged Venice’s foreign trade agreements, blamed powerless Jews for Venice’s money woes, even attempted to swindle benefices out of the Vatican.

SA: How and why did you first become a sleuth?

Tito: I didn’t set out to involve myself in crime. I was having enough trouble preparing for my opera debut and adjusting to living in my family home after years spent at a Naples conservatory. On opening night disaster struck. Adelina Belluna, a prima donna who had taken me under her wing, collapsed during the second act. It was soon discovered that she’d been poisoned, and my friend, Felice Ravello, was accused. Unjustly, I was certain, but the authorities were determined to close the case quickly and execute Felice. I had to find the real killer. In so doing, I found that I had both a natural streak of curiosity and a nose for justice that served me well.

SA: Many literary sleuths have a companion, or sidekick, in their investigations. Do you?

Tito: In PAINTED VEIL, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of Augustus Rumbolt. “Gussie” is an Englishman who was making his Grand Tour of Europe when he decided to defy his family and stay in Venice to study painting. My sweet sister Annetta may have had something to do with his resolve—Gussie is now my brother-in-law as well as my closest friend. Having spent his youth in tramping and riding over his father’s estate, Gussie provides a welcome strong arm in many of my cases.

SA: Is there an established police force in 1740s Venice? Do your efforts ever clash with official attempts to maintain law and order?

Tito: Venice has a rudimentary police force. The sbirri are rough men whose main job is to keep order during Carnival and our many festivals. If real detective work is called for, the task falls to the chief of the sbirri , Messer Grande—whose title translates to Mr. Big. Messer Grande rarely appreciates my efforts.

SA: Does your career as a singer ever interfere with your avocation as a sleuth? Or vice versa?

Tito: To the contrary. The opera houses of Venice are the meeting places of society. The Doge himself keeps an official box at the Teatro San Marco, and even the poorest gondolier has his space on a bench in the pit. In between, every layer of Venetian society is represented. I have access to everyone, high and low. They all know me because I am the celebrated Tito Amato, primo uomo .

SA: On that note, I hear that you’ve been accused—ahem!—of milking the audience for applause.

Tito (bristling): I enjoy an incredible rapport with my audience. They love me and I love them. I won’t apologize for that or for sharing the incredible voice that the knife bestowed and years of vocal training refined.

SA: I gather that the mysteries you solve are generally not tied to a discrete historical event.

Tito: You are correct, with one exception. In CRUEL MUSIC, an unscrupulous Venetian senator coerces me into helping him attempt to place his brother on the throne of St. Peter. Sent to spy on a music-loving Cardinal with the political power to swing the conclave, I was thrust into the midst of papal politics. And I thought Venetian aristocrats fought dirty! I have only two pleasant memories of Rome: finding Liya again and singing for Pope Clement XII. The blind pontiff was lingering on his deathbed, and I like to think that my angelic voice eased his last days.

SA: What’s next for you?

Tito: Carissima Bev has been making notes on the period in my life when I must face the decline of my golden throat and decide what the remainder of my time on this earth holds. She spends many hours pecking away at her writing device. There are many stories she could tell, but I believe she’s chosen the mysterious disappearance of my beloved mentor, Maestro Torani. It was an uncomfortable time for me in many ways—I was even suspected of murdering the poor man to gain his position of director of the Teatro San Marco. Imagine!

SA: What was your most fascinating, confounding, or horrifying case over the course of your career so far, and why?

Tito (visibly shaken): I believe you have a saying in the 21st century: You can’t choose your family. Truer words were never spoken. My younger sister Grisella was born at the moment our mother drew her last breath, and that tragedy set the tone for the rest of her life. Wayward isn’t the word for Grisella—one must think in terms of depravity and wickedness. Bev chronicled the culmination of Grisella’s misdeeds in THE IRON TONGUE OF MIDNIGHT. Surely this was the most horrifying set of murders I’ve ever been a part of, both because my own sister came under suspicion and because the midnight killer seemed to strike the isolated villa with absolute impunity.

SA: I understand you have a wife.

Tito: Yes. Liya, the love and light of my life.

SA: I’m confused. You’re a eunuch. How is it that you are able to marry?

Tito: It will surprise your readers to learn that many castrato singers have reputations as great lovers. The great Caffarelli temporarily lost his voice when he caught a cold hiding in a cistern to avoid his mistress’ angry husband.

SA: (snicker)

Tito: And then, there is the tragedy of Siface, who was murdered by his noble mistress’ family who objected to their liaison. Without violating my privacy, I will say that I do just fine, especially with the invigorating potions and unguents that my herbalist wife concocts. Despite my capability, the Catholic Church forbids the sacrament of marriage because I cannot physically father a child. Thus, my darling pagan and I “jumped the broom” in the tradition of the Old Religion, and I adopted her child as my own son.

SA: Though prominent historical characters rarely take center stage in your investigations, would you care to “name drop” about any fascinating people that 21st-century readers would’ve heard of?

Tito: I do hope they’ve heard of Maestro Vivaldi. After one of my operas, the great composer once put his hand to his heart and said, “Tito has just given us a taste of the choirs of Heaven.” Sticking with the musical world, I met Signor Handel during my disastrous visit to London (as yet unchronicled by carissima Bev). Just between us, I found him pompous and cold. The man works too hard—he needs to put his quill down and get out more. Lastly, I would wager your readers have heard of Casanova. The adventures of that self-styled great lover will endure down the ages—if someone else doesn’t write them, he will. A Venetian like myself, Casanova often attended the opera, ensconced in the box of a generous patron, generally in the back with his hand up a woman’s skirt. Believe me, good people, the man is only famous for being famous (as Bev puts it).

SA: Perhaps you know what “motion pictures” are. Which actor do you think would do the most accurate job of portraying you?

Tito: Do I understand correctly that my performances could be saved and recreated in some mysterious manner? That I could see myself acting on the stage, hear my own voice? But this is miraculous! Singing is the most fleeting of all arts—my throat sounds a note and it vanishes within seconds, never to be repeated in precisely the same way. To capture that … sheer bliss. How I wish these devices existed in my time.

Oh … you asked about an actor to play me. I truly have no idea, but carissima Bev is partial to Signor Johnny Depp. I only hope he’s able to sing soprano.

SA: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us, Signor Amato?

Tito: Bev is nudging me to list my adventures in order. She feels the series is most enjoyable when read from start to finish.

• INTERRUPTED ARIA In which a prima donna is poisoned, and I race the executioner to save my unjustly accused friend.

• PAINTED VEIL In which Gussie and I track a masked killer bent on destruction of the Venetian ghetto.

• CRUEL MUSIC In which I travel to Rome and find that the election of a new Pope can lead to murder.

• THE IRON TONGUE OF MIDNIGHT In which Gussie and I confront a killer who terrorizes a country villa.

• HER DEADLY MISCHIEF In which a courtesan tumbles to her death, and I must solve the mystery before the murderer comes after my family.

• Coming in 2013, STRIKING THE HAPPY HOURS In which my mentor disappears, and I am suspected of his murder.

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All the Tito Amato Mysteries are available in trade paper and as eBooks from Poisoned Pen Press ( www.poisonedpenpress.com ) or from your favorite local or internet bookseller. During 2012, the publisher in re-releasing the first five volumes with new cover art.

Beverle Graves Myers made a mid-life career switch from psychiatry to mystery writing. A graduate of the University of Louisville School of Medicine, she worked at a public mental health clinic before her first book was published in 2004. From her home in Louisville, Kentucky, Bev also writes short fiction set in a variety of times and places. Her stories have been published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Woman’s World, Futures, and numerous anthologies. She has earned nominations for the Macavity, Derringer, and Kentucky Literary awards.

For more information on the Tito Amato Mysteries and on Bev and cowriter Joanne Dobson’s new series set in World War II-era New York, visit this website: www.beverlegravesmyers.com

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Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear once or twice a month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook.

A Conversation with Jack Haldean, Mystery Writer–and Solver

Jack Haldean lied about his age to get into the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War.  A first rate pilot who had a gift for encouraging his men, he rose to the rank of major (a post later called squadron leader).  He was brought up by his beloved aunt and uncle, Sir Philip and Lady Rivers, in Sussex but, although he has landed gentry as relations, he has no inherited money of his own.  After the war he turned his gift for writing detective stories into a full time job and, helped by his friends and his own imagination and intelligence, has managed to solve some truly baffling cases in real life.

SA: Good morning, Mr. Haldean!  Tell us something about yourself and your world.

Haldean: It’s the 1920’s.  The War is—thank God!—behind us and there can’t be many days where I don’t feel a sense of how incredibly lucky I am, simply to be alive.  And yet . . . so many really good blokes didn’t make it that there’s always a tinge of sadness in that feeling of luck.  It’s bittersweet, you know?  The war, followed by the great pandemic of Spanish influenza, meant that all of us are, in a sense, looking over our shoulders, clinging to this little bright spot of life.  You can see that sense in the art, read it in the poetry and always, always hear it in the music.  I heard Rhapsody in Blue at the Queen’s Hall the other day and there, amidst the noise of the City, expressed in those urgent chords, there’s the plaintive wail of the clarinet and the transposition from the assertive major key, big with confidence, into the minor keys of regret.

London captures that mood.  One the one hand, it’s a big, confident city, where rubber from Malaya, tin from Singapore, tea from India, silks from China and coffee from Sumatra is all funnelled up the Thames, into the waiting docks and warehouses and out into London shops and British factories.  And yet, on the Embankment, looking out on to that same river, lie the poor beggars too poor to afford a bed.  Some of them are there, having squandered their chances, it’s the only place to go but most—including men who risked everything in the trenches—are there because it’s so very hard, once you slip off the ladder, ever to get a foothold back in to decent society.  I’d change that if I could.  If it wasn’t for good friends and a loving family, I could easily have gone down that road.

SA: How did you become a sleuth?

Haldean: It’s rum, this business of solving mysteries.  I drifted into it by accident. I’d always had a knack for writing but the real passion of my life was flight.  It’s hard to remember now how extraordinary it was that, with the aid of a few bicycle parts, a motor and some cloth, wood and wire, one of the great dreams of the human race—flight—had actually come true.  I was, of course, desperate to get into the war—we all were—and even more desperate to get into an aeroplane. I won’t say much about the war, but no one who went through it was ever the same again. I started to write stories, mainly about flying, which had to be published anonymously as I was a serving officer, but after the war, I was able to turn what had been a sideline into a job, when I landed a post on the magazine On The Town.  No one wanted to read about the war—it was all too real and too raw—but everyone wanted detective stories.

I met Bill Rackham, now Inspector Rackham of Scotland Yard, when I wanted some inside information about how the police would actually go about solving a crime.  Bill, an ex-infantry officer, and I hit it off from the start and I was lucky enough to spot the solution of a mysterious business that had occurred in Wiltshire.  After that, Bill got into the way of discussing cases that were a bit out of the way, and between us we managed to crack most of them.  

One case that Bill didn’t particularly want to land me with was finding out what had happened to Mark Helston.  He thought it was hopeless (and so did I!) as the police had investigated the affair and come to the conclusion that Helston, for reasons best known to himself, had vanished deliberately.  The case has been written up under the title of Trouble Brewing. Bill and I did find what happened to Helston but it was a far more mysterious business than any of us dreamed it would be at the beginning.

SA: How do you think the world of the 1920s compares with ours in the 21st century?

Haldean: Solving mysteries is something I’ve never been paid for and that’s one big difference between my world and the world Dolores Gordon-Smith tells me about.  I don’t think any amateur, however gifted, would be welcomed by the police in her time.  There’s been such huge advances in forensic science that it’s hard to see how an amateur would fit in.  The world as a whole has become more specialised and, with education for all, far greater weight given to paper qualifications in all walks of life. The gifted amateur seems as out of place as a brontosaurus. I do admire some aspects of the early 21st century, such as better housing, equality of races and the way women are free to enter the professions without being patronised, but I must admit there are some aspects of Dolores’s world I find bewildering.

Television, for instance.  It sounds like a good idea but hasn’t it damaged your lives?  Without television you’d all have to get out and form clubs and associations as we do and meet real humans instead of having life delivered to you vicariously as a series of moving pictures.  You all seem so isolated by the electronic devices that were meant to bring you together.  I’ve heard of two women chatting by email when they could simply walk out of their houses and actually speak to each other. And how hard are you expected to work?  We work harder and longer, but work stays at work. When we leave the office, that’s it.

I’ll tell you another thing that’s changed too.  Because world affairs are there in your living room through the television, it’s easy for some of you to think that you’re living in the most disaster-prone era ever.  That’s nonsense. We’ve got gross poverty, the aftermath of the war, the terrible pandemic of flu which killed more that the war itself, Russia descending into hideous cruelties and the Nazis on the rise in Germany but we don’t have to dwell on them every evening.

We’d like to think that Germany is going to sort its problems out but Dolores tells me there’s another war to come.  Honestly, after my experiences related in A Hundred Thousand Dragons, I’m not surprised.  I don’t know if that’s my most baffling case, but it was certainly the most personally wounding up to now.  I was involved, you see.  I was part of the problem and the man I eventually had to face was very much part of the new Germany.

He died and I couldn’t regret it.  There’s been very few murderers I’ve regretted bringing to justice.  There was one man—the story’s related in Mad About The Boy?—whose end I sincerely mourned.  He’d been my friend and was, in so many ways, a totally admirable man until he took that fatal wrong step.   I can only hope that in a better world he’ll find not justice—what he did was very wrong—but mercy.

SA: As a writer of detective stories, how do you think they compare with real life?

Haldean: Sometimes, when I’ve written a detective story, I’ve wondered about using murder as entertainment.  Real murder isn’t remotely entertaining but it’s the mystery that intrigues us.  We all want to know what happened and why.  I was delighted to learn crime and detective shows are popular on television. I’d love to see Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple’s cases acted out.  I understand they’re really good!  I’m not sure about seeing my cases on TV but if it had to happen, I’d like the actor to be half-Spanish, like me, intelligent and reasonably good looking.  We all have a little streak of vanity after all! 

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Dolores Gordon-Smith is the author of the Jack Haldean series set in 1920’s England, a Great War spy thriller, Frankie’s Letter, and a column in the UK’s leading magazine for writers, Writing Magazine. Trouble Brewing, Jack’s sixth adventure, was released in April.  She has been a teacher, a civil servant and a shaker-out of Christmas puddings in a jam factory. A huge fan of the “Golden Age” of detection, Dolores is married with five daughters and lives in Greater Manchester, England.

To find out more about Jack and his world and to read Dolores’ weekly blog, go to www.doloresgordon-smith.co.uk .

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Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear once or twice a month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook.

Interview with Miss China Bohannon, Bookkeeper (and Sleuth)

Smart and sassy 1890s bookkeeper turned sleuth China Bohannon is a magnet for danger. Perilous adventures come at her from all directions, actively seeking her out. She’s survived being kidnapped, thrown off a steamboat to drown, and even gotten shot in the line of duty. Is it also possible to survive a forest fire and multiple attempts on her life? China will be tested when, in Three Seconds to Thunder, a gang headed by a clever undercover boss strives to take over a whole forest, no matter who gets in the way. It’s a good thing China has a clear-eyed grasp of the evidence because the men in her life seem blind to obvious clues.

Leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of any China Bohannon mystery, One Foot on the Edge, Two Feet Below, or the latest in the series, Three Seconds to Thunder (forthcoming).

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Susanne Alleyn: How do you do, Miss Bohannon? What year is it now for you, and where do you pursue your trade?

China Bohannon: Hello. Have we met, perhaps before I escaped from my evil step-mother, Oleatha, and joined my uncle, Montgomery Howe, here in Spokane, Washington? For reasons I don’t wish to go into here, I took  the unorthodox step of running away from my former life in June, 1896. I’ll understand if you don’t want to acknowledge me now. I fear I may have acquired something of a reputation since I began work in Uncle Monk and (blushing) his partner Gratton Doyle’s investigative agency. But, aside from the annoyingly mundane requirements of the job—keeping accounts, writing letters and making out bills, answering the telephone, which Monk and Grat both seem to think will reach out and bite them on the lip— my work has become rather exciting. Frightening, too, at times. Please, allow me to tell you a little of what’s been happening.

SA: How and why did you become a sleuth?

China: I know some people will say these events are my own fault; that I shouldn’t be sticking my nose into what is inherently men’s business. And Gratton and Uncle Monk would both add a part about involving a certain Police Sergeant Lars Hansen in the mix. A great deal of distrust lies between my private investigators and the Spokane Police Department. Monk and Grat say Lars is not trustworthy, that he takes bribes and turns a blind eye when it suits him. At first I thought Grat’s warning was due to a rivalry over a certain Miss Fern Atwood (and I’m convinced this is part of it) but I’ve also seen for myself some of Lars’s questionable acts. And he does seem inordinately interested in Doyle & Howe cases.

Anyway, my very first adventure came about because the police department refused to look for a missing girl, the daughter of a maid at one of the big South Hill mansions. And then, to my shock, Gratton and Monk also turned the mother down. All the men seemed to believe the girl had “gone bad” and disappeared into the tenderloin district. So unfair—so wrong.

I ask you, what could I do when Rachel’s mother begged me . . . me . . . to find her daughter. And so I did. Too late, I’m afraid. The girl was dead. Murdered. And in the course of events, I was almost murdered, too. I tell you all about it in my story, One Foot on the Edge, so you can read for yourself what transpired.

Gratton gave me a dog, during this time, a purebred Bedlington terrier. He hoped she would help keep me safe, and she (I named her Nimble) has become a large factor in my life. But that’s another story, one between Gratton and me.

I must tell you my dearest wish is to be integrated into the detective business right alongside my uncle and Gratton Doyle. I would dearly love seeing my name on the shingle over our office door. Miss China Bohannon, Private Investigator, it would say. I want the freedom to take on cases that I feel strongly about apart from Grat and Monk’s approval, just like I did in solving Rachel’s murder.

In my next adventure, it was Monk and Gratton together who, in asking me to act as a simple decoy while they whisked a client’s family to safety, nearly got me killed. This took place in the Coeur d’Alene Mining District, a place of fabulous wealth, after one of the owners of the Flag of America mine was murdered. Since I was thrown overboard from a steamboat on Coeur d’Alene Lake and only by merest lucky chance (the Irish luck, you know) I survived, I don’t believe they had the right to ignore my efforts to bring these murderers to justice. Do you? And the worst thing is, they ignored me when I tried to point them in the right direction. It took getting shot, being mistaken for a prostitute, and indulging in a real fist fight to convince them differently. Well, I guess they finally learned. If you want to see how all this came about, I tell you in Two Feet Below.

My heart gave a giant leap when Gratton and Monk produced a new sign a couple of days after closing the mining district case. It’s happening. They’re making me a partner! Or so ran my giddy thoughts. They didn’t, though. What they did was make me the official office manager.  Better than nothing, I suppose, but my quest continues.

Go ahead. Call me a suffragette. I won’t exactly deny it, although I prefer the term “emancipated woman.” In Spokane, Washington, in 1896, there are many women working to legalize voting rights for women. The town is a regular hotbed of activity. We also want to promote a living wage for women. I believe any progress I make in my own employment is another stride towards equality for all women. I’m strong and capable. I can do this.

SA: Tell me about your most recent investigation. Are the mysteries you solve generally tied to contemporary historical events?

China: When I talk to the person who writes down my stories, I’ve learned that many of the things that happened in the story she calls Three Seconds to Thunder still happen in her century. It’s hard to believe. There are still incidences of land grabs, still timber thieves, still greed and murder. You’d think after all this time . . .

While I consider myself a modern 1890’s career woman, the Doyle & Howe Detective Agency hasn’t turned me loose on a case of my own just yet. I’ve got to say I’m champing at the bit (as Monk or Grat would put it) and recently, when a call for help came in, a trip into the mountains above the St. Joe country sounded just the thing to prove my worth and assist a friend at the same time. My friend Porter Anderson’s uncle had disappeared and a Johnny-come-lately timber baron claimed the family homestead. What’s more, he had a bill of sale for it. Porter was positive his uncle didn’t sign any bill of sale. The problem was proving it.  Porter knew his uncle would never sell out and leave the country without telling anybody. He was afraid old Lionel Hooker might be dead—murdered.

However, Monk being Monk, he declared the case unsuitable for a lady like me, and took it on himself. No one heard from him for days. With Gratton on another case, I ask you, what could I do? Just leave my uncle to the unknown? Not me. I set out to discover his whereabouts, that’s what, just as the dry lightning of summer set the whole darn woods ablaze.

What I found was a trail of lies, theft, and murder, with uncle Monk the next likely victim. Then, just when we believed the problem solved, trouble broke out again. This time, Gratton Doyle was the one in danger and I had to bail him out. I’m not sure how appreciative he is.

What I’ve learned is that every case is personal. I’ve learned I have to care deeply for the victim, and that I have to be prepared to take risks. But maybe the most important thing I’ve learned is this: Men can be downright silly. They are reluctant to consider a woman capable of being a murderer—murderess. Not even when the clues are right under their noses!

I believe I’ve still got a lot of work to do if I’m ever to reach my goal.

Signed:

Miss China Bohannon
Spokane, Washington
October 26, 1896

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C.K. Crigger lives with her husband and three feisty little dogs in Spokane Valley, Washington, where she crafts stories set in the Inland Northwest. She is a two-time Spur Award finalist, in 2007 for Short Fiction, and in 2009 for Audio, as well as the 2008 Eppie Award winner for historical/western fiction. She is a member of Western Writers of America, and reviews books and writes occasional articles for Roundup magazine.

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Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook.

A Talk with John, Lord Chamberlain to the Emperor Justinian

Empress Theodora

The year is 548 and Empress Theodora is dead, the victim of cancer. Or so everyone in Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire, believes. Everyone, that is, except Emperor Justinian, who orders John, his Lord Chamberlain, to find the murderer or suffer the consequences. There is no sign of foul play, but many of the aristocrats at the imperial court had good reason to want Theodora dead . . .

Susanne Alleyn: What year is it now for you, sir, and where are you located?

John, Lord Chamberlain: It’s 548. To be precise, it is July 2. I’m sitting in the study of my house on the grounds of the Great Palace in Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire. I had hoped to get to your communication sooner but my current investigation hasn’t left me time. In fact I’ve just now returned from a visit to the dungeons.

So though it’s late, I’ve lit a lamp and turned my attention to your queries. I’ve spent most of my time the past few days trying to answer questions Justinian has posed and yours are considerably less vexing.

I must live in Constantinople because, as one of the emperor’s closest advisors, I’m constantly on call. Emergencies don’t keep schedules. I would much prefer living on a farm in my native Greece.

It was Fortuna that brought me to this city, and she made me a slave and put me in chains to do so. I’ve manged to advance myself and throw off my literal chains, but figuratively, my official post binds me here, as surely as those poor wretches are confined to the cells I just left.

SA: What do you love most about the time and place in which you live? What do you like least? What particular aspect of your world—if any—would you change, if you could?

John: I can’t say I love either the time or the place. This time, like all others, is filled with horrors, both natural and manmade. How can one love living through plagues and earthquakes and endless wars in Persia and Italy and Africa? Not to mention street crimes and court intrigue. We might love the history that is past, that has become in our imaginations the Golden Age of Athens or the height of the Roman Republic, but the time we must live through is merely to be endured.

And I can say the same of this place. I must endure it until I can leave. As to what I like least or would change, perhaps I may be permitted to pass on those questions for, as we all know, walls have ears and long tongues, especially for what appears to be, or could be made to appear to be, treasonous talk.

SA: Well, what aspects of your world do you think would seem most alien to those of us who live in the 21st century?

John: The emperor’s right of absolute control over every life in the empire. Not only does he have temporal power over everyone, but he is also head of the church.

SA: Where and when were you born, Lord Chamberlain, and how did the events of the first 20 to 30 years of your life influence you?

John: I am Greek, born in 495. I attended Plato’s Academy just outside Athens but I ran off to become a mercenary. As a youngster I preferred action to philosophy. Not long afterwards I met my Cornelia, who travelled with a troupe re-creating the ancient Cretan art of bull-leaping. In a way it was because of her that I ended up where I am, and who I am. I wanted to buy some fine silks for her and accidentally wandered into Persian territory where I was captured and enslaved and later sold back into the empire. But that was all long ago, when I was in my early twenties. I eventually gained my freedom and set my boots on the ladder to the high office I currently hold. Although my hold at the moment feels rather precarious, given Justinian’s insistence that I find a murderer who doesn’t seem to exist.

SA: So how is law and order maintained in sixth-century Constantinople?

John: Here in the capital we have an urban watch under the command of the City Prefect. The excubitors, that is the imperial guard, can also lend assistance outside the palace if necessary. Law and order here means preventing riots like the Nika Riot back in 532, during which the mob nearly burned down the city.

Laws against common crime are hard to enforce and individuals are more or less on their own. Wealthy men don’t venture into the streets without personal bodyguards; everyone else carries a blade. Well, it is true I refuse to have a bodyguard, to the distress of my friends, but I would feel uncomfortable with companions always at my heels. I do carry a dagger and from my days as a mercenary I know how to use it.

As for investigations, sometimes a physician can guess at what sort of poison might have been used, but solving crimes is mostly a matter of tracking down scraps of information and then putting the pieces together. The mosaic on the wall of my study was assembled the same way.

SA: Does the thought of assisting the authorities to send a guilty person to execution, particularly a lingering, gruesome death, affect your personal feelings about investigating a crime?

John: My problem more often than not has been that the authorities cannot or will not mete out appropriate justice. I prefer not to think that I have had to personally administer justice, but rather that I have brought murderers face to face with the fate they deserved.

As to method of execution, a clean death is to be desired. The blade between the ribs is a better way to die than many which the authorities would employ.

SA: Is there someone, particularly an infuriating or downright evil someone who turns up in your life a lot, whom you’d like to murder if you could?

John: Until very recently, yes. But now moot, as well as being much too dangerous to answer.

SA: Are the mysteries you solve generally tied to contemporary historical events?

John: They are naturally tied to the society I live in, but not necessarily to world-shaking events that will be remembered by history. As it happens, though, practically everyone I’ve had to question during my current investigation is highly placed and might well be remembered: General Belisarius and his wife Antonina, the generals Artabanes and Germanus, the Patriarch of Constantinope, the pope, among others.

SA: My goodness—that’s most impressive. Tell us about this investigation.

John: Empress Theodora died last week after a long illness. Justinian is convinced she was murdered. So I’m trying to find a murderer who may not exist, or who might be too well connected for me to bring to justice. All those people I just mentioned had motives. And if I fail . . . well . . . I may end on that farm in Greece I was talking about, or more likely in those dungeons I’ve just come from.

And now I hope you’ll excuse me. I have been trying to speak with the captain of the excubitors but he seems to be making himself scarce. I suspect I will be able to find him at home in the small hours of the night. I would be happy to write more but I fear Emperor Justinian is growing impatient.

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The husband and wife team of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer published several short Lord Chamberlain detections in mystery anthologies and in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine prior to 1999’s well-received One For Sorrow, the first full-length novel about their protagonist. Nine For The Devil is the ninth entry in this award-winning series.

Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook. Her next novel, The Executioner’s Heir, about Charles Sanson, the hereditary executioner of Paris, will appear in 2013.

Meet Daisy Dalrymple, 1920s sleuth!

The Daisy Dalrymple series is set in the 1920s, when England was recovering from WWI, though many of its people were still suffering from the after-effects. Daisy herself lost her brother and her fiancé in the war, but she’s a cheerful person, who make the best of things, likes people, and enjoys talking to all sorts, from maids to marquises. She has one unfortunate habit—stumbling upon murder victims. As it has led to her acquaintance with and marriage to DCI Fletcher of Scotland Yard, she’s not so sure even that is a bad thing.

Susanne Alleyn: Tell me about your background, Miss Dalrymple.

Daisy Dalrymple: I was born in England in 1898 and grew up on a country estate in Worcestershire. My father was a viscount. I had an idyllic childhood (if you don’t count the French governess). And then, when I was sixteen, the War came along.

Because of the war, I didn’t have a London Season. When I left school, I worked as a volunteer in a military hospital not far from home. I was too squeamish to be a VAD nurse, so I helped in the office. I fell in love with a Conscientious Objector who drove a Friends’ ambulance. We were secretly engaged. Then he was sent to France, where he died when his ambulance was blown up by a German mine. A corner of my heart will always be his.

My father had always expected my brother to take care of me until I married. When Gervaise was killed in the trenches, Father was so stunned he didn’t get round to making a new will before he himself died in the ’flu pandemic. I was left with £50 a year—enough to scrape by on but not with any degree of comfort. I could have lived with my mother, the Dowager Viscountess, or with the distant cousin who inherited title and estate, but neither was a bearable choice.

After the Armistice, I went to London to share digs with my best friend, Lucy. To my mother’s horror, I became a working woman.

I learnt to type and take shorthand, but I hated it. Lucy is a photographer and she employed me to help her, but she didn’t really have enough work then for two. I had a brilliant idea—as the daughter of a lord with family connections in half the noble houses of England, I had entrée to many stately homes inaccessible to any ordinary journalist. I persuaded the editor of Town and Country magazine to pay me to write a series of articles about those country houses, laced with the history of the families.

That’s how I happened across my first murder, and met DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard . . .

SA: Are you a member of the police force or a professional investigator, then? How and why did you become a sleuth?

Daisy: I’m an unintentional amateur sleuth. I just keep getting caught up in situations where I can’t help but get involved. It all started on my first assignment as a journalist.

At the very first house I went to, an unpleasant guest was found one morning floating face down in the frozen lake. It would have passed for an accident, but for some photographs I had taken that showed suspicious marks on the ice. I drew them to the attention of the investigating officer, DCI Fletcher, and that was the beginning of it all.

Alec, not to mention his Superintendent, complains that I meddle in his cases, but the sad fact is, more often than not I’m involved before he is. When I’m already acquainted with the witnesses and suspects before he arrives on the scene, naturally I’m in a good position to help. To do him justice, he acknowledges that. He picks my brains—but then he expects me to stay out of his way and have nothing more to do with the investigation. As though I could ignore it when I’m right in the middle of it!

Besides, people tell me things they wouldn’t tell the police. Perhaps they don’t want to bother them with something that might not be important, or they’re afraid they’ll be asked further questions that they’d rather not answer. Some people just don’t like talking to the police. I sympathise. I’ve met a few local police officers I’d prefer not to have to talk to (not to mention Alec’s Superintendent).

Alec accuses me of sympathising too much, at least with those suspects I’ve “taken under my wing,” as he expresses it. It’s true I don’t always pass on everything I find out. Some of it is quite unnecessary for the police to know. Some would bring trouble to people who’ve done nothing to deserve it—in my opinion.

Doubtless Alec’s opinion would differ, which is why I sometimes don’t tell him everything I find out. He, after all, is a copper sworn to uphold the Law. I’m not. And my idea of Justice doesn’t always coincide with the Law.

In spite of our little disagreements, Alec and I married. I have a darling stepdaughter (Alec’s first wife was carried off by the pandemic that killed Father) and the most adorable toddler twins . . . But that’s not what you want to read about.

SA: Tell me about your most recent investigation.

Daisy: Gone West, an English phrase signifying “dead or disappeared,” is the account of my latest involvement in criminous activity (as my chronicler’s editor put it), which occurred as a result of my previous adventures. Of course, I’m as keen to keep quiet about my part in such things as Scotland Yard is, but word gets about.

An old schoolfriend, Sybil, heard via the Old Girls’ bush telegraph that I’d been mixed up in a few investigations. She turned up like a bolt from the blue and asked me to look into something fishy going on at the isolated Derbyshire farmhouse where she lived, working as confidential secretary to an author. A “troubled atmosphere,” she said.

It didn’t sound very serious. Besides, Sybil is a widow with a young daughter to support and no family to turn to. I couldn’t refuse her.  I agreed to go and stay for a few days (thank goodness for Nannies!) to see if I could help, and I drove to the Derbyshire Dales in my newly acquired second-hand Gwynne Eight. Climbing those steep, lonely hills was a bit nerve-wracking. There were moments when I didn’t think we’d get to the top of the slope without the radiator boiling over, or the carburettor giving up the ghost in some incomprehensible and unrepairable fashion.

We made it to the top in one piece, to the old stone farmhouse. What I found there was a household riven by resentment, jealousy, rivalry, envy, and long-held grudges. I should have turned tail right away, but how could I guess it would end in murder?

The local police found out—not from me!—that I was married to a Scotland Yard detective. They decided to call in the Yard and Superintendent Crane sent Alec, who was furious. He can’t believe I don’t somehow get mixed up in this sort of situation on purpose.

SA: I’m sure you’d never actually murder anyone, but is there someone whom you’d like to murder if you could?

Daisy: No, not really, but I can’t say I was unhappy when my dentist was murdered . . . He died happy, though. In fact he Die(d) Laughing.

SA: What was your most fascinating, confounding, or horrifying case over the course of your career so far, and why?

Daisy: The case described in Anthem For Doomed Youth was both shocking and heart-breaking. It started with the discovery of three bodies buried in Epping Forest, on the outskirts of London. Alec was ordered to try to find the killer before he added number four to his count.

I went off with a couple of friends to visit my stepdaughter and their daughters at their boarding school, safely out of the way. But we took the girls to a public garden and they went to explore the maze, where they found the body of one of their teachers—not a popular one, I’m glad to say.

As it turned out, this death and Alec’s multiple murders were linked, sort of. They were all connected with horrible things that happened in the War, years ago, the past wreaking havoc in the present.

Alec told me all about his case. I have to admit that I did not tell him all about mine. It was one of those occasions when he and I would not have agreed.

SA: You intrigue me! Well, thanks very much for the opportunity to chat.

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Leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of a Daisy mystery (US addresses only, please).

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I, Carola Dunn, was born and grew up in England, and most of my books are set in England, including 20 Daisy Dalrymple mysteries (1920s), 3 Cornish mysteries (c. 1970), and over 30 Regencies (early 1800s). I’ve lived in the US for many years, though, in Southern California and now in Eugene, Oregon—more like England with the changing seasons. My house is not far from the Willamette River, where I walk every morning with my dog, Trillian.  http://caroladunn.weebly.com/

Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook.

A Visit With the One and Only Dorothy Parker

Welcome to literary New York! Dorothy Parker is the wisecracking sleuth in the humorous historical mystery You Might as Well Die, the second book in The Algonquin Round Table Mysteries.

When second-rate illustrator Ernie MacGuffin’s artistic works triple in value following his apparent suicide off the Brooklyn Bridge, Dorothy smells something fishy. Enlisting the help of magician and skeptic Harry Houdini, she goes to a séance held by MacGuffin’s mistress, where Ernie’s ghostly voice seems hauntingly real . . .

Susanne Alleyn: Delighted to meet you, Mrs. Parker! What year is it now for you, and why do you live where you do?

Dorothy Parker: It’s the Roaring 20s in New York City. Why do I live here, you ask? Where else would I live? Dubuque? I’m a New Yorker through and through. And not just New York, but Manhattan. I get a nosebleed if I travel above 80th Street.

I’m a writer, unfortunately. And if you want to make a living and get published in America at this time, New York is the place to do it.

SA: What do you love most about the time and place in which you live?

Dorothy: I’m not much for sentimentality, but nevertheless I’ll tell you this—what I love most about my life and times is my group of friends. Many people call us The Vicious Circle. (That should confirm for you what I meant about sentimentality.) Others call our group The Algonquin Round Table because, you know, we have lunch at the Algonquin Hotel at a round table every day. (Very original, don’t you think?) We’re a gang of smart-mouthed writers, editors and critics. And we do what all writers do—we try to get away with as little writing as possible, and we drink and talk and trade insults instead. 

The founding members of the Algonquin Round Table: Art Samuels, Charlie MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott

SA: What aspect of your world would you change, if you could?

Dorothy: I’d start by adding a few zeros to my bank balance, and then I’d just play the rest by ear. There’s a dozen newspapers published in this town, and who knows how many magazines? They’re great about printing the news, but not one of them can print a nice check.

Also, I’d like to change what people think of me. They know me as a wisecracker, saying things like, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.” Or “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.” But I’m much more than a smart aleck. I write poetry, short stories and dramatic criticism—and some of it ain’t half bad, if I do say so myself.

(Editor’s note: The Portable Dorothy Parker, a collection of her best work, has never gone out of print since it was first published in 1944.)

SA: Most New Yorkers came from somewhere else. Where were you born?

Dorothy: Remember what I said about being a New Yorker through and through? Okay, I fibbed a little. I’m technically not a native New Yorker. I was actually born in the seaside town of Long Branch, New Jersey, while my family was on summer vacation in 1893. But, honestly, we came back into town right after Labor Day, so I nearly made the grade.

SA: When did you begin to solve mysteries?

Dorothy: In all honesty, I’m not preoccupied with solving mysteries. I’m a writer, for Pete’s sake… Well, I did find that dead drama critic under the Algonquin Round Table, who was stabbed through the heart with a fountain pen, and I had to help find out how he got there and who put him there. And now there’s a friend-of-a-friend who committed suicide under mysterious circumstances…

But my biggest mystery is always where to find the next cocktail.

SA: How is law and order maintained in New York in the Twenties?

Dorothy: Very poorly! Prohibition is on. There’s a speakeasy on every street and a flask in every back pocket. Bootleggers run rampant. (One almost knocked me over the other day!) Most of the cops are on the take. And gambling is a national pastime.

But, hey, ain’t we got fun!

SA: Tell me about your most recent investigation.

Dorothy: Right now, I’m trying to find out why a friend—well, no, not a friend, let’s call him a royal pain in the neck—decided to commit suicide. This guy was not some hand-wringing nervous wreck. Far from it. Ernie MacGuffin is—was—about the most self-assured, self-deluded second-rate artist in New York (and that’s saying something). Why would he take a nosedive off the Brooklyn Bridge? And then why would his “spirit” (notice the quotation marks) appear at a séance a week later?

Fortunately, I’ve made friends with Harry Houdini, who is not only a master magician but also a top-notch debunker of phony mediums. One way or the other, we’ll get to the bottom of what happened to MacGuffin.

SA: In the course of your investigations, who is the most interesting historical figure you’ve met so far, and why?

Dorothy: As I mentioned, I’m working with Harry Houdini right now. He’s gotten us out of a couple tight scrapes. But being in and around the Algonquin Hotel, I’ve met plenty of famous (and infamous) folks. Ever heard of William Faulkner, Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter? How about Paul Robeson or Edna Ferber? Oh, and there’s a fellow scribbler by the name of Ernest Hemingway. Keep an eye on him. I expect big things of him someday.

But perhaps the most important notable figure in my life is Woodrow Wilson—which is the name of my dog.

SA: If your cases were made into movies or a television series, which actor do you think would do the best job of portraying you?

Dorothy: Funny you should ask. Several actresses—my friend Ruth Gordon, for one—have portrayed characters that were fictional versions of me. It’s gotten to the point that if I wrote a screenplay about my own life, I’d be sued for plagiarism.

But who cares who would play me in a movie? I want to know who would play my love interest! I like the look of that Johnny Depp—the one in the pirate movies. Shiver me timbers, I’d walk his plank any day!

(Editor’s note: Readers can play this game, too. Vote here for which contemporary actress might play Dorothy Parker in a movie.)

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Leave a comment below for a chance to win a a paper or eBook copy of an Algonquin Round Table Mystery.

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When not writing the Algonquin Round Table Mysteries, J.J. Murphy is an award-winning health care writer and very busy parent of twin daughters in suburban Philadelphia. Visit www.roundtablemysteries.com or www.facebook.com/RoundTableMysteries.

Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook.

A Conversation with the Cambridge Fellows

Meet a pair of Classic Age type sleuths with an unusual twist. This isn’t Harriet and Peter or Tommy and Tuppence—it’s Jonty and Orlando!

Susanne Alleyn: Good morning, gentlemen! What year is it now for you, and where are you located?

Orlando Coppersmith: 1908, Cambridge.

Jonty Stewart: Cambridge in England. There’s another one in America, you know, Orlando.

Orlando: Really? How astonishing.

Jonty: We live here because we’re both based at St. Bride’s College, trying to knock some sense into our students. I teach them about Tudor Literature.

Orlando: And I lecture in Mathematics.

Jonty: Orlando’s frighteningly clever.

SA: How did your historical milieu influence you?

Orlando: I’m not clever enough to answer that.

Jonty: Try us with another one.

SA: Well, how did the events of your early lives influence you and/or your careers as solvers of mysteries?

Orlando: Um, I’m not sure that’s any better.

Jonty: What Orlando means is that neither of us had that easy a start in life. His family were . . . not exactly loving. Would that be fair?

Orlando: It would. I’m not as lucky as you, old man. Jonty has an extraordinary family with whom I get on very well.

Jonty: He means I have a very loud mother who’s madly in love with him and a terrifyingly clever father who likes to solves cryptograms with him. Win all round.

Orlando: Meeting Jonty showed me that all sorts of things in life were possible. Love, friendship, going out and using my brains for something other than mathematics. He changed my life.

Jonty: Daft beggar. And meeting Orlando gave me hope at a time when I was a bit low. I had a rough time of things at school and it came back to haunt me at times. He changed my life, too.

Orlando: Can we change the subject, please?  

SA: Is either of you a member of the police force?

(a choking sound)

Jonty: Oh I say, Orlando. Steady there. (He whacks his back.) I’m afraid that the police wouldn’t exactly approve of our relationship. Up before the beak and two years hard labour if they knew what we got up to in private.

Orlando: We’re amateur detectives, although we do work alongside the police when need be. That’s how we got started, acting as the eyes and ears for Inspector Wilson of the local force when there was a series of murders in St. Bride’s. (Lessons in Love)

Jonty: We get commissions, too. People ask us to solve crimes, particularly old ones.

Orlando: Sometimes hundreds of years old.

Jonty: Nearly as ancient as you, Orlando.

Orlando: Very funny.

SA: Do people contact you, as they contacted Sherlock Holmes?

Jonty: You said the ‘S’ word. Orlando won’t approve. I like Holmes—and Watson, he’s a marvellous bloke—but old grumpy guts here thinks Sherlock’s a bit of a smarty pants.

Orlando: I refuse to comment. And don’t call me “grumpy guts” in public.

SA: Tell me about your most interesting investigation.

Jonty: That has to be the time we saw a dead man at The Anglo-French exhibition at the White City just before the Olympics of 1908. We didn’t know he was dead until afterwards, of course. (Lessons in Trust)

Orlando: Excuse my friend’s rambling. He can never keep to the point. The police told us in no uncertain terms that we couldn’t investigate the death.

Jonty: So we did, of course.

Orlando: And you nearly got yourself killed.

Jonty: And you did a runner. This idiot found out something rather distressing about his family history and decided to go off and investigate it. Without me.

Orlando: I think our most interesting investigation was the one about the Woodville Ward. (Lessons in Discovery)

Jonty: Don’t change the subject. And trust you to choose for your favourite a mystery that was all about coded letters and nothing to do with real live people. What about the time you had to pose as a gigolo? (Lessons in Seduction)

Orlando: I was not a gigolo. I was a professional dancing partner. Next question, please, before my “friend” finds anything else to make fun of me about.

SA: All right, then: What was your most fascinating, confounding, or horrifying case over the course of your career so far, and why?

Orlando: Maybe you shouldn’t answer that, Jonty.

Jonty: No, it’s fine—people have to know. The most horrifying was when we got asked to look into the death of one of the people who’d made my life hell at school. It was agony at the time, although now I can look back and say it did me a power of good. I had to face my demons and having Orlando at hand made it easier. (Lessons in Power)

Orlando: The most horrifying case for me was our first one. What began as a fascinating intellectual exercise turned sour. If I’d known it would put Jonty’s life at risk I’d have never agreed to be involved.

Jonty: Daft pudding. Of course you would. He loves a challenge, really.

Orlando: Maybe I should talk about the case at Bath? And your propensity for flirting with actors. (Lessons in Temptation)

Jonty: Change the subject again, please.

SA: Are the mysteries you solve generally tied to contemporary historical events?

Jonty: Sometimes. The opening of the White City was a huge event for London. My father was obsessed with the place, to the point of Mama threatening to cite it as co-respondent in her divorcing him.

Orlando: I sympathise. I’d have liked to cite your motor-car in the same way.

Jonty: But we’re not married, Orlando, shame to say.

SA: In the course of your investigations, have you encountered important historical figures who played supporting roles in your cases?

Jonty: In the past, yes. When we solved the Woodville Ward mystery we ran across Richard III, Henry VII and Elizabeth Woodville. Orlando’s almost old enough to remember being dandled at their knees.

Orlando: Don’t forget, I’ve worked out at least three foolproof ways of murdering you without the risk of being caught. Actually, he’s hiding his light under a bushel, again. He’s the one who got dandled at royalty’s knee. The Stewarts are all very pally with the royal family.

Jonty: That’s what got us involved in the gigolo—sorry, dancing partner—case. The king’s old mistress died under mysterious circumstances and they needed someone of discretion and good sense to put into the hotel where it happened. Nobody like that was available, so they asked Orlando.

Orlando: Excuse me while I resort to method number one.

SA: Who is the most interesting historical figure you’ve met so far, and why?

Orlando: The Duke of Connaught, the King’s brother.

Jonty: Was he the one who fancied that chap playing Lady Macbeth in the all male production because he thought he was actually a girl? Nice bloke. He used to dandle me on his knee.

Orlando: Do shut up about that.

SA: Presumably you are somewhat familiar with our early 21st century, after conversations with your author. What would you most like to take back to Edwardian times?

Jonty: The freedom to hold Orlando’s hand in public—at least in Brighton. Not that he’d let me, probably, being a shy old stick, but the opportunity would be nice.

Orlando: I’d welcome the chance of entering into a Civil Partnership with Jonty. An official declaration of how much we mean to each other.

Jonty: I’d like to fly in one of your modern aeroplanes. How wonderful to cover the length of the British isles in little more than an hour. And going to Jersey without resorting to a ship would be good, wouldn’t it, Orlando? He gets sick as a dog when we sail.

Orlando: Hm. In his case it might be an Uncivil Partnership.

SA: Does the thought of assisting the authorities to send a guilty person to execution affect your personal feelings about investigating a crime?

Jonty: Sometimes. But I salve my conscience with the fact that the law’s the law and people who take a life know what will happen to them if they caught. Render unto Caesar and all that.

Orlando: And I’d rather the right person was charged with the crime than some innocent man or woman. We’ve seen some near misses, haven’t we?

Jonty: Just a few. If we can help save the innocent, it’s all to the good.

SA: And to conclude . . . I’m sure neither of you would ever murder anyone, but is there someone, particularly an infuriating or downright evil someone who turns up in your life a lot, whom you’d like to murder if you could?

Orlando: Owens, from “the college next door”.

Jonty: He’s St. Bride’s arch-enemy and any decent college man would strangle him with his own bicycle clips.

Orlando: I’ve devised two other foolproof and undetectable methods of murder, just for Owens.

Jonty: I said he was frighteningly clever, didn’t I? If he ever took to a life of crime, we’d all be doomed.

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Leave a comment below for a chance to win a print copy of one of the Cambridge Fellows books OR an exclusive “Seductive Dr Coppersmith” t-shirt (winner’s choice).

As Charlie Cochrane couldn’t be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice—like managing a rugby team—she writes. Her favourite genre is gay fiction, predominantly historical romances/mysteries. A member of the Romantic Novelists’  Association, and International Thriller Writers Inc, Charlie’s Cambridge Fellows Series, set in Edwardian England, was instrumental in her being named Author of the Year 2009 by the review site Speak Its Name.

Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook.

An Interview with Aristide Ravel, Spy and Investigator for the Police of Revolutionary Paris

Aristide Ravel is a freelance investigator or “agent” for the Paris police during the last two decades of the 18th century. From the final years of the monarchy to the French Revolution, the Terror, and the decadent Directoire of 1795-99—years in which agents of both the revolutionaries and the royalists were kept endlessly busy—life goes on, order must be maintained, and crimes must be solved.

Susanne Alleyn: Salut et fraternité, citizen!

Aristide Ravel: Pardon me, but before we proceed any further, I ought to remind you that I detest being called a police spy. Spies—paid informers—are loathed by all decent citizens, and I much prefer to be called an investigator, as you very well know.

SA: My mistake. Sorry about that. Please tell everyone a little about your place and time, if you would.

Ravel: I live and work in Paris, capital of the world, in the 1790s. During the past century, everyone wanted to live in Paris, of course: It’s the capital of art, taste, fashion, intellect, and pleasure. At present, during the Revolution, although the opulence has diminished appreciably—it’s not wise to flaunt one’s wealth too openly—it’s still a city of unlimited prospects. Since the fall of the Bastille in ’89, scores of intelligent, ambitious, idealistic folk from all over France have flocked here, brimming with ideas of how to remake our country—perhaps all of Europe—in the best democratic fashion, as we do away with the worn-out remnants of our ancient, often-abused feudal customs. Would I live elsewhere? I doubt it.

SA: Tell me a little about your background, before you came to Paris.

Ravel: I was born in 1758, in Bordeaux, a beautiful, thriving, lively city. My father was a prosperous merchant. I still love Bordeaux, but I can never stay there for long, because of what happened when I was nine years old: I lived a sheltered life like any young son of the well-off bourgeoisie until the day when my father, mad with rage and jealousy, murdered my mother and her lover. He was put to death for the murders—quite horribly, by breaking on the wheel, a foul and cruel form of punishment that, thankfully, the king abolished in 1789.

SA: Such a painful event must have affected you for a long time.

Ravel: You don’t know the half of it, citizeness. The relatives of a felon, no matter how respectable the family, are regarded with contempt and distaste by all, even tradesmen and servants. A convicted criminal’s property, moreover, is confiscated by the state, leaving his surviving dependents with nothing. So suddenly my little sister, Thérèse, and I were left paupers; luckily, my mother’s brother, an attorney, took us in. I was able to go to boarding school and get a good education, though I had to endure endless taunts from the other boys.

SA: Why don’t you tell our readers how you became an investigator?

Ravel: It was purely by accident. You know quite well that, until I went to Paris, I had no intention of working for the police, of all things!

SA: But you do.

Ravel: Because Inspector Brasseur foisted it upon me. He thought I had a natural gift for investigation, and decided to make use of it, whether I wished to cooperate or not.

SA: Yes, your original ambition was—

Ravel: Oh, I was going to be a famous author. After returning to Bordeaux after school, and working for a few years as a clerk in my uncle’s law office, I couldn’t stand any more of the whispers and glances. Since I already had thoughts of trying my luck as a writer, and had little love for the practice of law, I pulled up stakes and headed for Paris in ’85 to live in a garret and scribble illegal, but profitable, political pamphlets. But a short while later Brasseur dragged me into a murder case—you detailed the affair thoroughly in The Cavalier of the Apocalypse. That case soon led to others.

The duc d’Orléans was right when he told me I was a better investigator and clandestine agent than I was a writer; I worked for him for some time (I probably shouldn’t talk too much about what I was up to, but everybody knows that the duke—and his money—had a hand in undermining the monarchy in those years before ’89). Since then, I’ve also worked for Danton, in between investigating criminal matters for the police, usually with Brasseur, who is now a good friend.

By the way, citizeness, while we’re having this chat, why not explain to me why my first murder case—The Cavalier of the Apocalypse—was not the first of my published adventures?

SA: Blame my publisher . . .

Ravel: One should always blame one’s publisher for almost anything, I’ve found.

SA: . . . They asked me for certain stories from a list I’d offered them, without paying any attention to the chronological order in which they had occurred.

Ravel: Evidently publishers haven’t changed much since the 18th century.

SA: So how is law and order maintained in 18th-century Paris?

Ravel: Paris has had a large, centralized, extraordinarily efficient police force (aided by thousands of those spies whom everyone hates so much) for over a century. Unlike London, which has only a few constables and night watchmen who are always overwhelmed by the inevitable lawlessness born of a large city’s squalor, Paris is very well regulated. The responsibilities of our police are spread much, much wider than those of police in your century: They practically run the city, being in charge of such things as sanitation, public health, orphanages, licensing, and so on, together with what you think of as police duties— maintaining public order, and preventing crime and sedition.

That’s why I never wanted an official position in the Paris police; I would have had to become a bureaucrat as well as an investigator. As it is, I’m quite content as a free-lance, as long I have enough money in my pocket to pay for my rent and my dinner . . . my needs are few, I’ve found.

SA: What’s going on in the world around you?

Ravel: Mon dieu, need you ask? The French Revolution, of course. The greatest event in the history of the world, according to some. The most dreadful, according to others. It all depends on your perspective, I suppose.

SA: And what’s your perspective?

Ravel: Back in ’85, when I was scrawling my vitriolic political pamphlets, insulting Fat Louis and his empty-headed queen to earn a few livres, I was all in favor of anything that would do away with our seemingly frozen absolute monarchy, customs, and system of law. (Perhaps I should say, not “frozen,” but “rusted into rigidity and uselessness.”) During the first years of the Revolution, I, like almost everyone else except for the most narrow-minded of the nobility and clergy, firmly believed we had at last achieved our goals.

By 1791 we had many reforms and, in a constitutional monarchy, something approaching a more democratic and impartial government. But, owing to dissension from various sides—and the vanity, blindness, and obstinacy of a few key figures—and the irrational pressures that religion exerts on many folk—and the catastrophic, costly war we blundered into that never seems to end—eventually it all went wrong. So from starting out as quite a firebrand before the Revolution, I’ve become merely a disappointed liberal with no taste whatsoever for politics. I expect many of my fellow citizens feel the same.

SA: Well, getting back to your career as a sleuth, what was your most fascinating, confounding, or horrifying case?

Ravel: I’m sure there are many more investigations in store for me, but I must say that the most horrifying, if only for the number of murders involved, has to be the affair of the headsman (related in Palace of Justice) whom I pursued in the autumn of ’93, at the start of the Terror. A madman, or so we thought, was leaving headless corpses strewn around Paris, as if to mock the guillotine; it didn’t help that I was currently preoccupied with much more personal matters. My friend Mathieu Alexandre, merely because of his moderate politics, was then in prison under suspicion of counterrevolutionary activities (nonsense, of course—Mathieu was a sincere patriot) and was eventually tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal, not known for its leniency. Brasseur and I finally caught the headsman, to be sure—but the affair turned out to be extraordinarily bitter and painful and I’d rather not speak of it.

SA: What aspects of your world do you think would seem most alien to those of us who live in the 21st century?

Ravel: Well, despite the endless, wildly exaggerated portrayals, in your popular fiction, of our revolution as an anarchic welter of gore and severed heads, I honestly think that you in the 21st century would find France before the Revolution considerably more alien than you would find conditions during the Revolution itself. Many of the freedoms that you take for granted—freedom of the press; equal rights and justice under the law for all; freedom of thought and a government divorced from the Church—were only pipe dreams in France until 1789, though they were granted, or began to be granted, during the Revolution.

Before the Revolution, you could have been severely punished, even condemned to death, for acts of sacrilege or blasphemy—for owning books that criticized or ridiculed the Church, for defacing a church or shrine, or for making offensive jokes about religion. And if you were condemned to death for whatever reason, the manner of your execution depended not upon the heinousness of the crime, but upon how blue your blood was. If you were a nobleman, you were beheaded with a sword in what was considered an honorable and gentlemanly fashion; if you were a commoner, you were hanged, or broken on the wheel. (The guillotine is, in my opinion, a great improvement for everyone—for sometimes not even a “gentlemanly” execution went as smoothly as it should have.)

SA: Speaking of executions, does the thought of assisting the authorities to send a guilty person to execution affect your personal feelings about investigating a crime? Or do you believe that murderers deserve what they get?

Ravel: I do believe that most murderers—not all—deserve death, if there is absolutely conclusive proof that the culprit is guilty. But I also suspect that sometimes innocents, like Joseph Lesurques in the famous case of the robbery of the Lyons mail-coach in ’96 (you included a little about it in Game of Patience), are punished for crimes they didn’t commit, and that is a terrifying thought. It was of no consequence to the authorities before the Revolution, however, because the theory behind prerevolutionary justice was one of dissuasion: the example of punishment, always in public and the crueler the better, was supposed to warn potential malefactors away from committing crimes . . . so even the unjust punishment of an innocent person was supposed to be of benefit to the community (though that was small consolation to the unfortunate victim, I imagine). We have done away with that appalling concept in our reformed penal code, I’m glad to say.

Knowing that a successful investigation will probably lead to an execution hasn’t yet kept me from solving a crime. I must confess, though, that I now feel far less uneasy about dispatching a culprit to the guillotine, a quick and painless death, than I would have felt, before the Revolution, in sending him to be hanged or, worse, broken.

SA: What would you say to 21st-century people who declare that things are so bad right now that surely “this is the worst time ever to be alive”?

Ravel: Try living through the Terror. I would tell such spoiled children to grow up, or to read a history of the past thousand years. You have mechanical marvels that are commonplace to you but would seem like magic to us in the 18th century; and in many parts of your world, absolute monarchies and all their abuses have been abolished and the democratic ideals that we fought for during the Revolution have been put into practice. No time or place in history has ever been a bed of roses; your century, despite its many ills, has much to commend it.

SA: And what about the age of the French Revolution do you think is most relevant to those of us who live in the early 21st century?

Ravel: Didn’t you just write an essay about that yourself, citizeness?

SA: Yes, for a blog—

Ravel: In my day, I expect it would have been published as an inflammatory pamphlet and sold illegally under the counter, to avoid the censors.

SA: That’s true. I’ve heard that some historians are comparing the explosion of opinion writing—influential opinion writing, I should say—in today’s blogs to the explosion of opinion writing in the late 18th century that helped bring about the French Revolution—

Ravel: —Which was brought about by certain advances in printing technology, as yours was by the rise of your “Internet.” Imagine, if we had only had your “computers” and “Internet” and “blogs” in 1789 . . . eh bien, I find it highly amusing that you call your “blog” a “Blague” at your own “site web”—for, of course, blague is French for “joke.”

SA: But what about the Revolution do you think is most relevant to us?

Ravel: While investigating crimes, one learns a great deal about basic human nature. That hasn’t changed over the centuries. The rich and privileged rarely want to give up their riches and their privileges and will fight tooth and nail to protect them. I think that is as true of the first decade of the 21st century in a republic, as it is of the last decade of the 18th century in a monarchy. No matter the century or the situation, the powerful are always guided first by self-interest, and when tensions between the angry many and the powerful few come to a boil, you may not be able to contain the resulting explosion. That is what led us eventually to the Terror, during which a great many people who richly deserved it lost their heads—and a great many more who did not deserve it did also.

SA: And with that cheerful thought, we’ll have to close. Au revoir, citoyen!

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Leave a comment below for a chance to win a hardcover copy of The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Ravel’s first investigation (USA addresses only, please).

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook.

eBooks for Kindle or Nook of Game of Patience and A Treasury of Regrets: currently 99 cents each for a limited time!

Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

A Visit with Master Leonardo

Filled with action, mystery, and lots of historical detail, the Leonardo da Vinci Mysteries feature the legendary Leonardo as a Renaissance sleuth, solving the not-so-occasional murder in 15th-century Milan at the court of Ludovico Sforza, titular Duke of that province. But even a great genius needs a sidekick. Enter Delfina della Fazia, a young woman who has disguised herself as the boy “Dino” so that she can join Leonardo’s workshop and study painting with the Master. “Dino” assists Leonardo as he uses his brilliant inventions and keen powers of observation to confront desperate criminals and scheming nobles in his mission to uncover the truth. And sometimes, they even manage to paint a fresco or two!

Susanne Alleyn: Buon giorno! Please tell us a little about yourself.

Leonardo: I was born Lionardo di ser Piero da Vinci on the 15th of April in the year fourteen hundred and fifty-two in the town of Vinci in Tuscany. My mother, Caterina, delivered me without benefit of marriage . . . my father, Ser Piero Fruosino di Antonio, was a wealthy legal notary who saw to my physical needs, though he did little to nurture my emotional ones. I lived from household to household until I was apprenticed to the great Florentine master, Verrocchio, when I was fourteen years of age. My education was meager, at best, and the greatest portion of my knowledge self-taught, even after I joined Verrocchio’s workshop.

SA: What year is it now for you, and what are you up to?

Leonardo: It is now the year fourteen hundred and eighty-four. At barely past thirty years of age, I am master of my own workshop here in the graceful city of Milan, with fully a score of young men under my tutelage. More specifically, I serve as Master of Pageantry and Master of Warfare—as well as court artist and court engineer—to the most beneficent Ludovico Sforza, our province’s titular duke (since he serves in place of our young regent, he is more properly governor until the Pope sees fit to hand him that title). For the moment, I have no desire to live elsewhere, though should I fall from favor from my current patron, I have considered offering my services to the king of France.

SA: With so many titles and responsibilities, how should we address you? How are you known to your contemporaries?

Leonardo: In my youth, I was known as Leonardo, son of ser Piero of Vinci. The people of Milan call me Leonardo the Florentine, and others refer to me as Leonardo da Vinci. Please, signora, do not make the common error of your time and refer to me as “da Vinci” minus my given name, as that appellation simply indicates my place of birth. You may call me Master Leonardo, or Master, as my apprentices do.

SA: How is law and order maintained in your era and part of the world? Is there an established constabulary or police force?

Leonardo: The word of Ludovico Sforza is our law. His wishes are upheld by his private army consisting mostly of mercenaries from various lands; in other words, his loyalty is bought with coin. Of course, the Pope, as God’s purported representative on earth, has jurisdiction over everyone, even the duke…or so the Holy Father would have it. For my own part, I believe that every man should have jurisdiction over himself, and no one else.

SA: What sort of sleuth are you, Master? How and why did you solve your first mystery?

Leonardo: I am what you would call an amateur sleuth . . . though, of course, in my time there is not a formal guild for such personages. As to how I fell into that role, it began a few months after my arrival at court. The Duke—again, we call him by that title for expediency’s sake—prevailed upon me to discover the identity of the person who so boldly murdered his cousin. It was only natural that he chose me for that role, given my advanced powers of observation and same methodical manner of examination that has served me well in my day-to-day research. And it did not escape Ludovico that, as a newcomer to Milan, I was perhaps more to be trusted than those long known to him who might have reason to harm him or his family. I was glad to serve him in this matter, for the villain had the audacity to commit this murder during a living chess match that I personally orchestrated for the entertainment of the duke and a visiting French ambassador.

SA: Do you work alone?

Leonardo: No, I am assisted by one of my more clever apprentices, young Dino, who unfortunately was the first to discover the duke’s luckless cousin dead from a knife wound in a hidden garden. Dino endured all manner of trials and bravely stood beside me as we determined the true culprit in this most heinous crime. Following that successful conclusion, the duke has charged me and my apprentice to uncover the truth behind other suspicious deaths here at court.

SA: Describe some contemporary investigative techniques that you use.

Leonardo: Keen observation is the key to all knowledge, for the answer to any question lies before your eyes should you but open them wide and truly look. You ask about investigative techniques. I have more than a passing knowledge of anatomy and a similar acquaintance with medicine; thus, I am able to determine from an examination of a body the likely cause of death. I am also familiar with poison and its effects. But I confess to using unorthodox techniques, as well. My apprentice, Dino, has served in disguise as my eyes and ears, going places where I, as a well-known figure at court, could not venture without suspicion. In fact, the boy’s youth and fair features have allowed him to pass as a female on one memorable occasion. And, of course, I have used various of my inventions in the pursuit of the truth.

SA: What do you love most about the time and place in which you live? What particular aspect of your world would you change, if you could?

Leonardo: I was fortunate to be born into a time when enlightened men have begun a true quest for greater knowledge; still, most sadly dwell in the darkness that is ignorance and refuse to be roused from that state. As far as change, I would have men of God concern themselves with the hereafter, and leave me to the here and now to conduct my research as I see fit. Too many times have I been plagued by those who would brand me as a heretic simply because I pursue the truth.

SA: Tell me about your most recent investigation.

Leonardo: My apprentice, Dino, records our adventures for posterity. Our most recent case, known in your time as A Bolt From the Blue, was the most troubling that we have yet seen. Not only did we lose one of our dear apprentices to brutal murder, but Dino’s esteemed father was kidnapped when he tried to prevent the theft of my most magnificent invention to date, a flying machine.

SA: Presumably you have learned a little about our age. What aspects of your world do you think would seem most alien to those of us who live in the 21st century?

Leonardo: My study of history has led me to conclude that, in the most important ways, men of my time are little different from men of yours. The baser emotions—love, hate, anger, lust—remain unchanged from age to age. Of course, there are many great differences between your time and mine. We do not tolerate idleness; all are expected to pull their own weight, while amusement is not a daily occurrence but is reserved for feast days. Your women would chafe under the restrictions of life in my time, and rightfully so, for equality between the sexes is unheard of, even among the nobility. And anyone raised under a democratic form of government such as yours would be hard-pressed to bend a knee and accept the word of a single man as law.

Moreover, I fear the people of your time do not realize their extreme good fortune in the medical advances which allow them to experience what would be perhaps two lifetimes for the average person of the fifteenth century. One has not lived until one has known the fear of plague and famine, which in your time is a scourge only in what you call the Third World.

SA: What was your most fascinating, confounding, or horrifying case over the course of your career so far, and why?

Leonardo: I consider every unnatural death horrifying. My apprentice, Dino, suffered the nightmare of being entombed alive in our first adventure, The Queen’s Gambit, and very nearly succumbed to a knife-wielding killer. I have myself been wounded more than once by those who would prefer their cruel deeds remain undiscovered. I fear I can give no further details lest I reveal too much to those who have not yet read these accounts.

SA: Does the thought of assisting the authorities to send a guilty person to execution, particularly a lingering, gruesome death, affect your personal feelings about investigating a crime?

Leonardo: I regret the loss of life of any man—or woman. But as I am uncertain as to what lies past death, I have reached the reluctant conclusion that justice must be served in this world, rather than hoping for judgment in the next.

SA: Have you ever wondered if you made an error during an investigation? How do you live with that?

Leonardo: I have never erred in exposing the method and motive of a person responsible for murder; however, human nature being what it is, on occasion I have miscalculated others’ reactions to the knowledge I have discovered. In one particular instance, the truth led to the tragic death of an innocent, for which I still blame myself. And, almost as troubling, that same death brought about a prolonged and unhappy rift between me and my beloved apprentice.

SA: Perhaps your author has told you what “motion pictures” and “television” are. If the accounts of your cases were made into movies or a television series, which actor do you think would do the best and most accurate job of portraying you?

Leonardo: I must admit to an unseemly fascination with your wonderful inventions of movies and television. And perhaps you know that, as Master of Pageantry to the duke, I have no little talent for performance. Given that, I should of course portray myself. If that is not possible, my author suggests that perhaps a gentleman by the name of Orlando Bloom might adequately fill that role.

SA: (irrepressible giggle) An excellent choice. Arrivederci!

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Leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of The Queen’s Gambit (to be mailed to the USA or Canada only).

Diane A.S. Stuckart is the critically acclaimed author of historical romance and short fiction, as well as the popular Leonardo da Vinci mysteries. Her Leonardo books have received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, along with the Florida Book Award Silver medal. A native Texan, Diane now lives in South Florida and is hard at work on a contemporary cozy mystery series. Visit her at www.dianestuckart.com for updates on the next Leonardo installment.

Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook. eBooks for Kindle or Nook of Game of Patience and A Treasury of Regrets: 99 cents each for a limited time!

An Interview with Lucien Caye, 1940s Private Eye

Come prowl the lonely, sometimes violent streets of America’s most exotic city, the city that care forgot, New Orleans, with a lone-wolf private eye named Lucien Caye. Women float in and out of Caye’s life, like the alluring brunette who wants him to bodyguard her while she poses for sexy pictures, and the long, cool blonde seeking to discover the secret of the ‘red witch’ living down the street from Caye, a woman calling herself a love sorceress. Murder is often the name of the game in pursuit of the truth. Unfortunately, the truth is often ugly, often dangerous and usually resides on the loneliest part of town.

Susanne Alleyn: Hello, Mr. Caye! What year is it now, and where are you located?

Lucien Caye: It’s 1949 and I’m beat up. Not physically, but mentally. I’m sitting here in my digs in the lower French Quarter, New Orleans, where I was born, grew up and was a cop before and after the war. Need a vacation but can’t think of anywhere to go. Also can’t think of living anywhere else. An old buddy once told me, people only leave New Orleans if they have to, like that old buddy. He’s not around because he’s on the lam.

SA: So what do you like and dislike most about New Orléans?

Caye: I love living here in the rundown section of the old Quarter where the rent is low, the people are loud and the food is incredibly inexpensive and incredibly good. The neighborhood fits me like an old shoe. I’m comfortable here, know what to do instinctively and can do my job much easier here. A PI needs connections, needs to know people and most importantly, need to talk like they talk.

What I like least is what everyone in New Orleans doesn’t like—the weather. My friend Tennessee Williams says there are only four days each year in which the weather here is tolerable—two in spring and two in autumn. Otherwise it’s a steam bath or a bone-chilling wet cold.

SA: How is law and order maintained in 40s New Orleans—or perhaps I should say, how well is law and order maintained?

Caye: New Orleans has always has a bad crime problem, even from the days of the French rule. Just before the turn of the 20th century, it was called ‘hell on earth’ as special teams of police officers would have to sweep the city streets at dawn to pick up bodies, primarily from Sicilian vendettas and Irish gang murders. It’s not as bad now in the 1940s, but crime is never far away.

People in New Orleans want as much out of life as they can get, so the good times roll here, which provides plenty of work for private investigators like me. The New Orleans Police Department, where I worked for a while, has been and still is an out-numbered, beleaguered force, rife with corruption and political deals. It has always been ‘who you know’ rather than ‘what you know’.

SA: Tell me about a recent investigation of yours.

Caye: It started when I found a letter stuck in the lacework balcony of my apartment building. Some clown in a hot rod destroyed a mailbox, scattering letters through the neighborhood. This letter was wet and addressed to Santa Claus. The envelope fell apart when I picked it up so I spread it out, saw it was written in the printing of a child who asked Santa to come take him to the angels so his parents won’t have to feed him and can spend what little money they have to feed his little brother. His daddy didn’t have a job and they had no electricity and were hungry.

I could image the child putting the letter in the mailbox downstairs. It had to be a neighbor. It was Christmas and I was a detective and had to do something about it. I canvass the neighborhood after dark and find a house with no lights on. The father was a war veteran, like me, and couldn’t find work. He wasn’t looking for charity but I was going to help if he wanted me to or not because when we were over there, fighting the Nazis and the Japs, we were together and we’re still together.

SA: After conversations with O’Neil de Noux, your author, and learning about early-21st-century America, what aspects of the mid 20th century do you think would feel most alien to us now?

Caye: It’s a slower time, a more simple time, a less violent time. Children play outdoors, run through neighborhoods and everyone watches out for them—drivers and pedestrians. If a child is hurt or lost, everyone will help. Children are not stolen or harmed.

Men pursue women, openly. Wolf whistles, flirting. Most women are housewives here in the 1940s; their primary ambition is to get married and raise a family. What you call “alternate lifestyles” are hidden as much as possible. Arguments and grudges are settled with fists, instead of guns. Cops are openly violent to criminals, some who need street-justice, a good ass-whipping, to understand what they did was wrong.

There is no television, no cell phones, no instant communication. Private eyes like me solve mysteries the old fashioned way. We talk to people.

SA: What was your most fascinating, confounding, or horrifying case over the course of your career so far, and why?

Caye: It goes back to my first case. I met a woman at a Valentine’s Dance, February 14, 1947. We danced for hours and really clicked. Her long, strawberry blond hair framed a very pretty face, full lips and gorgeous blue eyes, but what was in the eyes was more exciting. It was the promise of a connection between us. Sounds corny, but it was as if we were meant to meet that night. We kissed once, goodnight, and it was a kiss that made my heart race, as scintillating a first kiss as I’d ever felt.

She went into her parents’ house and I went home, had trouble sleeping, drove by her house early the next morning on my way to a surveillance gig and spotted police detectives in the park across from her house. They’d found the body of Annette Bayley—that was her name—early that morning. She’d been strangled. I was the first suspect but they quickly eliminated me, ordering me to stay away from the case.

Of course I couldn’t. Annette’s face, the promise of that kiss, haunted me. It still does and I worked the case on the sub rosa until we found the killer. I won’t ruin it for you. Better if you read the story “Too Wise,” which is in New Orléans Confidential. Too Wise was Annette’s nickname in school because of the two ‘Ys’ in her last name and she was a wise guy as a kid.

It was a kiss with promise behind it, as much promise as a good girl would give.

SA: Capital punishment was more prevalent in the 1940s. Does the thought of assisting the authorities to send a guilty person to execution affect your personal feelings about investigating a crime? Or do you believe that murderers have made a choice to risk the consquences of being found out and condemned, and deserve what they get?

Caye: When I was young I remember thinking the death penalty was not good. I thought it barbaric until I became a patrol officer and saw the bodies of victims and changed my mind. Killing Nazis in North Africa, Sicily and Italy confirmed my belief that some people ought to be killed.

That was until I worked the case of the first woman executed by electric chair in Louisiana. Her name was Judy Wells. You probably know her by the moniker given to her by the newspapers—“The Gungirl.” I was the one who caught her and I don’t think she did it. My story’s been written, published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine’s July/August 2010 issue in a story titled “They Called Her The Gungirl.” I think O’Neil plans to put it on his website. You can read it there. I don’t want to talk about it, if you don’t mind.

As I’m writing this, I just finished my wandering daughter case and I’m again haunted by a woman, a far more dangerous woman. Why do so many of my cases involve pretty women? Why do they haunt me?

SA: We’ll just have to wait and find out, I suspect. Thanks, Mr. Caye, for visiting.

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O’Neil De Noux writes realistic crime fiction, strong on setting, mostly New Orleans, featuring the accurate dialogue of the streets. He also writes scintillating erotica and science fiction adventure stories. He has published seven novels and six short story collections. Awards include the 2007 Shamus (Best Short Story), 2009 Derringer (Best Novelette) and Career Advancement Award for 2009-2010 from the Louisiana Division of the Arts for his novel set during The Battle of New Orleans. Visit him at his author website.

New Orleans Confidential, a short story collection starring Lucien Caye, includes two award-winning stories: “Too Wise”—The Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Award for Best Novelette and “The Heart Has Reasons”—The Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for Best Short Story. Other stories include: “St. Expedite” • “The Iberville Mistress” • “Christmas Weather” • “Erotophobia” • “Friscoville” “Lair of the Red Witch” • “Kissable Cleavage” • “Hard Rain • “Expect Consequences”.

Historical Sleuth Interviews will appear around the middle and end of each month. Authors, if you’d like your historical sleuth to be interviewed here, please send Susanne a note with a little information about your books.

Susanne Alleyn is the author of the Aristide Ravel French Revolution Mysteries (The Cavalier of the Apocalypse, Palace of Justice, Game of Patience, and A Treasury of Regrets) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in paper and eBook via Amazon.com and other major retailers.