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.)

*   *   *

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

They’re tracking a murderer through the streets and bedrooms of Rome.

Rome: 96 AD. When the body of Sextus Verpa, a notorious senatorial informer and libertine, is found stabbed to death in his bedroom, suspicion falls on his household slaves—a potential death sentence for them all. The emperor Domitian orders Vice-Prefect Pliny to investigate. However, the Roman Games have just begun and for the next fifteen days the law courts are in recess. If Pliny can’t identify the murderer in that time, Verpa’s entire slave household will be burned alive in the arena. Plinius teams up with Martial, a starving author of bawdy verses and hanger-on to the city’s glitterati. Pooling their talents, they unravel a plot that involves Christian “atheists,” worshipers of Isis, sleek courtiers, a vengeful concubine, a child bride, and a paranoid emperor.

Susanne Alleyn: Good day, citizen. Please tell us a bit about yourself! What year is it now for you, and where are you located?

Pliny: As I write this, it’s late October of the year 863 From the Founding of the City, as we Romans count the years. I believe you would call it AD 110. I am sitting in the Governor’s palace in Nicomedia, the capital of the province of Bithynia. And frankly I would rather be almost anywhere else! My chief tax collector has been found with his neck broken, buried in a shallow grave out in the woods. Several people, including his wife, might have liked to see him dead, but it now seems that he was also mixed up with a mysterious secret cult of the barbarian god, Mithras. Meanwhile, corruption is running rampant and the whole province is about to explode if I don’t do something soon. And I am running out of ideas!

SA: What about your early life?

Pliny: I was born 50 years ago at Comum in the north of Italy. My father died when I was young and I was adopted by my uncle. You may have heard of him—Pliny the Elder, the great encyclopedist. Ours was a studious household (he was an indefatigable scholar) and I suppose I’ve inherited my literary interests from him. (I’ve composed hundreds of letters to my friends—quite polished little essays, really, which you might enjoy reading.) But certainly the most dramatic and formative event of my young life was the destruction of Pompeii. We were living on the Bay of Naples when Vesuvius exploded. I was just seventeen. My mother and I barely escaped with our lives. Sadly, my uncle perished. I’ve written all about this in two long letters to my friend, Tacitus.

SA: Tell us something about your family life.

Pliny: I am blessed with a wonderful wife, Calpurnia. She was just fourteen when I married her (less than half my age) and she is devoted to me. As a young bride, she would sleep with copies of my speeches under her pillow whenever I had to be away, and she set my poems to music, which she sang to the lyre—quite untaught except by Love itself. (Lately, though, ever since we’ve come to this wretched province, something is troubling her; she seems distant, preoccupied. I don’t know why. I fear I’m neglecting her.)

SA: How is law and order maintained in Rome?

Pliny: We have no such thing as a police force as you understand  it. In Rome, we have the Praetorian Guard and the City Cohorts to maintain order. Most other cities have nothing at all. But the whole notion of detecting crime by looking for clues is really quite an alien notion. That’s why it strikes me as odd how many fictitious Roman detectives you in the 21st century have, considering how few (if any) really existed!

SA: Presumably you are somewhat familiar with our early 21st century, after conversations with Mr. Macbain. What aspects of your world do you think would seem most alien to those readers from the 21st century?

Pliny: Well, that would have to be slavery. Of course, it’s an evil—the Stoic philosophers teach that—but, alas, a necessary one. For us, slavery has nothing to do with race, we’re happy to enslave anyone. But Roman slavery law is very harsh. In my first case, I was motivated by trying to save a whole household of slaves from being executed because it seemed that one of them might have murdered their master (who was a cruel man and deserved it). But that’s how it is. We can’t live without them and, at the same time, we fear them. I must say, I treat mine a lot better than most people do.

SA: What about the history of your era do you think is most relevant to those of us who live in the early 21st century?

Pliny: We are an imperial nation, quite persuaded of our god-given destiny to tell everyone else how to live, and we spend a huge percentage of our budget on the military. Sound familiar?

SA: Alas, yes! So what would you say to 21st-century people who moan and groan and complain about how bad things are in our current economic and political climate. Would you be itching to say “Learn some history and take a look at what’s going on in my world—you’d probably want to stay in yours!” ?

Pliny: Oh, no. On the contrary, we Romans now live under an excellent emperor who shoulders the burdens of government and ensures peace and prosperity for all. No sane person would want to go back to the bad old days of the Republic. Democracy is a nice philosophical ideal but quite impractical and we’re much better off without it! This is the happiest age mankind has ever known, as I believe your historian Edward Gibbon wisely observed.

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

Pliny:  If not the one I’m faced with now, then certainly my first case, described in Roman Games, which I alluded to above. Without giving too much away, I was badly taken in by a very clever murderer and it nearly cost me my life. I am embarrassed to recall it. I shall say no more.

SA: In the course of your investigations, have you encountered important personages (whom we in the 21st century would recognize) who played supporting roles in your cases?

Pliny: In my first case, I was assisted (if that’s the word) by the poet Martial. Of course, the man’s a rascal and composes the most filthy verses, but he does know his way around the seamier parts of Rome, which an upstanding senator like myself wouldn’t dream of frequenting. In my current case, my staff officer, Suetonius, is a great help to me. And, then, there is my beloved freedman, Zosimus, without whom I’d be quite lost.

SA: Does the thought of assisting the authorities to send a guilty person to execution, particularly a lingering, gruesome death such as the methods you Romans frequently use, affect your personal feelings about investigating a crime?

Pliny: Oh, we’re quite convinced that the threat of punishment is key for crime prevention. I myself have tortured and crucified a few malefactors. Deplorable, of course, but what else can one do? At least we don’t lock them up in prison for years on end. Barbarous.

SA: How would you describe yourself?

Pliny: I like to think I have the virtues of my nation. Not brilliant, perhaps, not clever like these insufferable Greeklings I  have to deal with. But steady and determined and painstaking. By Jove, the virtues that made us great! (Pardon me if I sound a bit stuffy. I do unbend every now and then and I’m really quite a decent fellow.)

SA: I’m sure you are, citizen. And may the gods be with you in solving your current quandary!

Roman Games, by Bruce Macbain, is available in print and as an eBook.

Bruce Macbain holds degrees in Classics and Ancient History and was formerly an Assistant Professor of Classics at Boston University. He decided to stop writing scholarly articles (which almost no one read) and turn his expertise to fiction—a much more congenial medium. Roman Games (Poisoned Pen Press, 2010) is his first published novel. He is currently at work on its sequel, The Bull Slayer. He lives with his wife in Brookline, MA.

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.

Mehitable (“Hetty”) Henry and her friend Increase (“Creasy”) Cotton are two nosy Puritans in Boston who are sent—usually by a young Cotton Mather on the verge of a nervous breakdown—to settle community problems like murder. Hetty, a wealthy 25-ish widow and shipowner, has connections to high and low society; Creasy is a young minister trained to ferret out the guilty secrets of the human soul. Between them, they are a Puritan evildoer’s worst nightmare.

Susanne Alleyn: Greetings, Mistress Henry! Please tell me a little about your world. Would you prefer to live elsewhere?

Hetty Henry: It’s the Year 1695 in Boston, chief Town of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. I am a successful Woman of Commerce in the City, which every One knows is the Center of the Universe. Live some where else? Surely, you jest. Unless it’s my Farm in Rumney Marsh, just outside of the City, of course. There’s a young Lad I’m keeping my Eye on there.

SA: What do you love so much about a society which many of us in the 21st century view (perhaps mistakenly) as bleak, fanatical, and joyless? Wouldn’t you like to change it?

Hetty: Nonsense! I enjoy the Lust for Life our People have—we eat fresh Foods and in great Quantities, drink heartily, and love . . . Well, you’ll find out in my next Adventure. Change any Thing? I think not.

SA: Tell me about yourself, then.

Hetty: I was born in 1665 in a Time when Massachusetts Bay had been left to govern itself for many Years. We are an independent People, with our own democratick Form of Elections, where Education for all is mandated, and with Commerce where Women often run the Business while the Men are at Sea. As a Widow I can own Property and have many other Freedoms, so I have vow’d to remain a Widow. As a Puritan I am expected to keep an Eye on my Neighbour to see that he keeps to the Godly Path; “nosy” is good for a Detector.

SA: What sort of law and order does Boston have?

Hetty: Our Constable, John Phillymort, is a complete Bible-quoting Prig, so he is of little Help in solving Crimes. We do have Magistrates and follow British Law Books. Creasy and I are good at asking Questions and making Deductions, and occasionally I try playing a Trick that usually backfires like a faulty Blunderbuss. We became Detectors when young Cotton Mather, suppos’d to be a Community Leader besides his ministerial Duties, had (as you would say in your Century) a nervous Break-down and was in no Condition to find out who had murder’d a Boston Minister. (His Father, my Uncle Increase Mather, was away in London negotiating a new Charter for the Colony, otherwise he would have overseen it.) Creasy had no choice but to investigate. I chose to butt in, being what you, in your time, might call “a pushy Broad.” It was a success and we were ask’d to do other Investigations.

SA: Such as?

Hetty: Our latest Case took us to Cape Cod, to a small Seaport called Billingsgate (you would call it Wellfleet), famous for its Oysters. I was going there to buy Casks of Oysters for Boston Fanciers but really I intended to investigate at the Request of my Friends, Marge and Tom Tiley—for their great Friend and a very popular Person, Charlie Pierce, was found floating in the Bay with a Knife in his Back. Creasy accompanied me, ostensibly to preach to the Natives. Since everyone lik’d Charlie, who was generous with his Money and with his Labour to the local Fishermen, the Tileys could not imagine who would harm him. This, I confess, was one of the Times when a Prank I pull’d to catch the Killer backfired and nearly got Tiley’s Friend Cody kill’d. Cody did thank me in very imaginative ways—the “hottest s—x” yet, you would say, in my Adventures . . . I think I must say no more. My report is call’d: Death of a Cape Cod Cavalier; and ’twill be publish’d late in your year 2012.

All my Adventures have a certain historical Background in my present Time—the mysterious Deaths of Ministers (Murder, Mather, and Mayhem); the Land Fraud by the founding Father of what will become your State of New York (Death of a Dutch Uncle); the Witch Trials in Salem (Death of a Bawdy Belle); the Harassment by Magistrates and Ministers of a Dancing Master (Death of a Dancing Master); and the Importance of Oysters for Wellfleet (Death of a Cape Cod Cavalier).

SA: What would you say to spoiled (or religiously deluded) 21st-century people—particularly in the United States—who declare that things are so bad right now that surely “this is the worst time ever to be alive” or “all this is a sign that God must have decided that the end of the world is due any day”?

Hetty: I would say to your Troubles, in your Parlance: SUCK IT UP!

Tho’ my Cousin Cotton Mather would fit right in your Times: he whines, thinks he is the Sun and the Moon together, is what you call a Hypochondriack, and always feels as if he is in the Shadow of his Father—and he is. Increase Mather is the great One in the Family. (Cotton is also—to use your most entertaining Expression—a Chick-Magnet, because of his Position and because he does like Women.)

Cousin Cotton Mather, indeed, would be a fascinating Study for a “Psychologist” of your Era. Cotton has written over four hundred Publications, is a Member of the Royal Academy in London for his scientific Interests, speaks with Angels (truly!)—and was NOT responsible for the Salem Witch Trials, which your modern Writers claim. The Judges were all Colleagues of his Father, whom he hesitated to criticise from Boston, but he did urge them not to use the Testimony of Ghosts. Too bad they did not listen to him. His real-Life “nervous Break-downs” do, however, serve as an Excuse for us to investigate Murders in the Community.

SA: What was your most exciting or dangerous investigation, so far?

Hetty: I would say our most dangerous Case—for me, at any rate—was that call’d Death of a Bawdy Belle. It takes Place during the Salem Witch Trials and Mistress Kemp and I, in chronicling it, us’d actual Dialogue from the Trial Transcripts. When an extra Body was found on the Gallows, Creasy and I were ask’d to investigate, to my Peril. Because I was getting close to the Killer, I was tied to a Wharf Support and left to drown by the incoming Tide. That was most horrific.

SA: I know the Puritans use capital punishment as part of their system of justice. How do you feel about that? And if there were one person whom you’d secretly like to kill (though you wouldn’t, of course), who would it be?

Hetty: We do have capital Punishment in the Bay Colony. The Means of Execution in New England are usually by Hanging. We never burn’d Witches—that was Europe into the 18th Century, not New England. At Salem one Man was press’d to Death with Boulders—because he refused to plead, and that meant his Heirs could inherit. Hanging, done properly, is an instant Death. I have no Problems with that. Perhaps you People do not know that after Salem, the Victims’ Families were compensated; and the Victims were exonerated. Justice is always a Priority with us—I am told that we Puritans were probably the only Americans in your early History to hang a white Man for killing an Indian.

The only Person I should like to kill is that Prig Constable Phillymort, who is constantly interfering and arresting the wrong Man.

SA: So tell me a little more about your relationship with Creasy. Or is that a secret?

Hetty: Do Creasy and I have, as you would say, a romantick Relationship? Not really. Oh, on one Case we nearly—“got it on”—whilst reading a Pile of steamy Love Letters written to the dancing Master, but that d—ned Constable pounded upon the Door at the crucial Moment . . . Mainly Creasy thinks I am too bossy and I think he’s too easily impressed by a pretty Face. Handsome Women can’t kill People, he thinks? I know better.

Though, as a Widow, I don’t hesitate to go to Bed with a Man I like. I’ve got this Mohawk “hunk” that I hope to see again. (All the Women like Billy Blue Bear.) I admit that sleeping with my Friend’s Fiancé in Wellfleet wasn’t right, though. Oh well, no Harm done, and I had sav’d his Life, so that was his Way of thanking me. Again and again and again . . .

SA: And to conclude, what do you think your 21st-century readers would find most alien about New England in the 1690s? And what else can you tell us about your Puritan community that we probably aren’t familiar with?

Hetty: I think your Century would find most foreign two Things: firstly, the Freshness of our Food—right from the Sea or off the Hoof, our Vegetables grown locally, as they are at my own Farm—many of our Citizens own Farms near Boston; and secondly, the strong Place Religion has in our Society, even in secular Affairs. Ministers are Community and political Leaders as well as Clergymen.

There was a little-known Event in my Day that probably affected your Revolution nearly one hundred Years later: the Arrest of Royal Governor Edmund Andros on Charges of Corruption. We sent him back to London in Chains. Cotton Mather was ask’d to write out our Reasons for doing this—we could have been charged with Treason—’twas a first Declaration of Independence, of a sort. We had been independent for many Years and Andros threatened to make us Slaves. This we could not stomach. We managed a Revolution without Bloodshed in 1689. May all such Revolutions be equally bloodless.

Death of a Cape Cod Cavalier, by M.E. Kemp, will appear in print in autumn 2012.

M. E. Kemp‘s roots go back to Salem in 1636 so she has an affinity for New England history. Her ancestors settled the town of Oxford, MA in 1713 and continue to live there to this day. Kemp herself, being more adventurous, lives in Saratoga Springs, NY, home of the famous race track where she hawks tip sheets to bettors and ogles the shirtless jockeys.

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.

Susanne Alleyn: What year is it now, Mrs. Fuller, and where are you located? Why do you live where you do?

Mrs. Annie E. Fuller: It is the fall of 1879, and I live in San Francisco, California, my birthplace. However, I returned to the city only two years ago, when I inherited a lovely old home on O’Farrell Street from my maternal aunt. She and my uncle, along with my parents, moved to San Francisco in 1850, as part of the first Gold Rush migration. The house was a wonderful gift because I had been living off the charity of my in-laws in the four years since my husband’s death. Needing a means of support, I turned the home into a boarding house, and one of my aunt’s former servants, Mrs. Beatrice O’Rourke, is my cook. I also employ one full-time maid, Kathleen Hennessey. Together, these two excellent women serve my nine boarders.

SA: Would you rather live anywhere else?

Mrs. Fuller: No! San Francisco, with its hills and sweeping vistas of the great bay, is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Even though the city is just recovering from the effects of the terrible national depression, I believe the economic future of the city is very bright. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad ten years ago, the city’s population has grown to well over 200,000 people, and there is a kind of youthful energy here that you don’t find in the older cities back east. I hope I never have to leave here again.

SA: How did your life before you returned to San Francisco influence you?

Mrs. Fuller: My childhood was rather unusual. I was born May 14, 1853, in San Francisco, however, my parents and I moved south to a cattle ranch outside of the small village of Los Angeles when I six. My mother was in ill health, and my father thought that the warmer, drier climate to the south would be better for her. The ranch was very isolated, and I seldom saw anyone besides the Mexican ranch hands. I realize now that ranch life permitted an extraordinary degree of physical freedom for a girl. But my mother died when I was twelve, and my father and I left California, making the six month long trip around Cape Horn to return to his birthplace, New York City.

The isolation of my childhood, my mother’s death, and this trip cemented the unusually close bonds I had with my father. My father, Edward Stewart, was a well-respected businessman and stockbroker before he took up ranching, and he resumed this profession when we moved back east. While I attended an exclusive female academy, it was the lessons in finances with my father each evening that I loved most. I found I had inherited my father’s business aptitude, and he was so proud of me, letting me make my own investments by the time I was sixteen.

I am sorry to say, my husband, Mr. John Fuller (I married at nineteen), didn’t have the same respect for my expertise, and, after my father died, John made a series of terrible business decisions that wiped out my inheritance. I was left penniless when he died in 1874, which is why I was so grateful when my inheritance from my aunt provided me a home of my own. I have sworn I will never be financially dependent on anyone, ever again.

Unfortunately, I found that the income from the boarding house barely covers the expenses, which is why I decided to supplement my income as Madam Sibyl, a clairvoyant. Oh dear, you will keep your promise not to reveal that I am Madam Sibyl, won’t you? It would never do for the connection between Mrs. Annie Fuller and Madam Sibyl become public knowledge.

SA: Yes, certainly, Mrs. Fuller, but does this mean you are not entirely happy with the constraints put on women by society in 1879?

Mrs. Fuller: Women may have made some gains in the last fifty years; for example, two San Francisco women, Clara Foltz and Laura deForce Gordon, were recently successful in winning the right to take the California bar exam. In other ways, nothing has changed. If I were Edward Stewart’s son, instead of his daughter, I would have been able to get a job with a brokerage firm as soon as I arrived in San Francisco, and I could have dispensed with the fiction that I get my business advice from reading palms or casting horoscopes. A woman’s options in life are still so limited. They can marry and be dependent on the whims of their husband, stay single and remain under the authority of their fathers, or they can get a badly paying job in occupations that provide little beyond a future of hard work and poverty.

SA: Is this why you became a private investigator, as a blow for women’s rights?

Mrs. Fuller: Oh dear, I am afraid you have gotten a mistaken impression. I have no intention of making a living solving crimes. My involvement with crime has been limited to two cases, and I am strictly an amateur. This past summer I helped uncover the truth behind the death of Mr. Matthew Voss, one of Madam Sibyl’s clients. At first the police ruled his death as suicide because of financial reverses. I knew this couldn’t possibly be true. Mr. Voss would never shame his family in that way. Besides, I knew that under Madam Sibyl’s (that is to say, my) guidance he had been making a good deal of money from his financial investments. I only got involved in investigating his death to clear his good name and make sure his family wasn’t left destitute, the way I had been at my husband’s death.

SA: What investigative techniques did you use?

Mrs. Fuller: Well, I suppose I simply use my powers of observation and my knowledge of human behavior. These are two skills that have been central to my success as Madam Sibyl, and they helped me discover the truth about the death of Mr. Voss. I secured a temporary position in Mr. Voss’s household as a domestic servant, which permitted me to search the premises and witness the interactions of the members of the household. This was something that a male police officer or investigator would never have been able to do. I also gained profound appreciation of the difficult life of domestic servants. When I hear a man of my class speak of how women must be protected because of their innate frailty, I want to laugh. Not one of the self-satisfied merchants living in their fine homes atop the San Francisco hills would last a day in the life of one of their young Irish servant girls.

SA: Please tell me about your most recent investigation?

Mrs. Fuller: One of the residents in my boarding house, Miss Pinehurst, asked me to look into the activities of a local trance medium. She was concerned because her sister had been attending séances held by Arabella and Simon Frampton, believing that they had contacted her recently deceased young son, Charlie. Miss Pinehurst believes the Framptons are frauds and that her sister is endangering her health by her obsession with the spirit world. I must say, from my attendance at several of these séances, that I quite agree with Miss Pinehurst’s assessment. I know that Spiritualism is a belief system that has given any number of very intelligent men and women a good deal of comfort, but I find the activities of people like the Framptons quite repugnant. They prey on a person’s grief for monetary gain. At least as Madam Sibyl I know the advice I am giving is based on a solid foundation of fact and that the lives of my clients are improved by that advice.

SA: Do you work alone on your investigations, or have you cooperated with the police?

Mrs. Fuller: I have tried to steer clear of any formal contact with the police because I don’t welcome any sort of notoriety that might tarnish the respectability of my boarding house. That is one of the reasons it is so important to keep the real identity of Madam Sibyl a secret, something that might be very difficult if I actively cooperated with the police. However, I have had help in my investigations from Mr. Nathaniel Dawson, the Voss family lawyer. He was initially quite dismissive of my investigations into his client’s death. He eventually came round and was quite helpful in breaking the case, and he has just offered to help gather information about the Framptons, which I do appreciate. In addition, my servant, Kathleen Hennessey, has been coming with me when I attend the Frampton séances. While I am locked in a dark room listening to strange spirits moan, she has been finding out about the other members of the Frampton household.

SA: Finally, what about the history of your era do you think is most relevant to those of us who live in the early 21^st century?

Mrs. Fuller: Mark Twain, one of San Francisco’s most famous former citizens, has called our era “The Gilded Age,” and from what I know of your time, there are numerous parallels. After a decade of unprecedented economic growth after the Civil War, the United States has become a nation of staggering inequality. The millionaires, who made their wealth by paying their workers low wages to work in unsafe conditions and stripping away the nation’s timber and mineral resources without paying a dime in fees, plunged the nation into a terrible depression when their reckless speculation in railroad stocks caused the “Panic of 1873.” Banks failed, businesses went bankrupt, real estate values plummeted, and it is estimated unemployment reached 14%, causing people to actually starve to death. I experienced firsthand the devastation of this economic downturn, as did many of Madam Sibyl’s clients.

My father taught me that America will never see steady economic growth until the working people make enough in wages to afford the manufactured goods their labor produces. Otherwise, we will be dependent on foreign trade and at the mercy of the ups and downs of the stock market and the reckless decisions of greedy bankers. From what I know of your era, not much has changed.

Even more distressing is the way that people turn against each other in economic bad times. Rather than blaming the wealthy capitalists of our nation and the politicians they have corrupted, the poor Irish workers in San Francisco, like Dennis Kearney, vented their anger against the city’s Chinese immigrants, men like themselves who were just trying to make a living. I have had numerous arguments with Mrs. O’Rourke, my friend and cook, over this issue, and I understand that in your era there has been a similar tendency to blame immigrants. Such a shame.

Yes, I fear the crimes against groups like immigrants and poor working women and underpaid miners far outweigh the crimes that I have investigated. But I try to do what I can to right the wrongs that I see, even if it upsets a man like Nate Dawson’s belief in what is appropriate behavior for a gently reared woman.

SA: Thank you, Mrs. Fuller, for your insights!

Leave a comment here at the blog to be entered into a drawing for a paper or e-copy of Maids of Misfortune or Uneasy Spirits!

M. Louisa Locke, a retired U.S history professor, has recently published the first two books in a planned series about Victorian San Francisco, Maids of Misfortune and Uneasy Spirits, both best-selling historical mysteries on Kindle. Locke blogs frequently on self-publishing, is a featured contributor to Publetariat, and is on the Board of Directors of the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative. She is currently working on the third book in her series, Bloody Lessons.

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.

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

Mary Wollstonecraft: It is the year 1792 and I am here in my small house on Store Street, London, which my benevolent, sine qua non bookseller-publisher rents for me. I live here because I can afford no other, and though I prefer to be dependent on no man, I must accept Mr. Johnson’s kindness. It is a small house, and as occasional helpmeet I have a sassy young maidservant, Dulcie, the bookseller’s relative, who calls herself a non-servant and that goes well with me. Why should another female serve me?

SA: I understand you are an indefatigable reformer. What of your world pleases you, and which particular aspect of your world do you wish most to change?

Mary: Alas, “The world is too much with us / Getting and spending we lay waste our powers./ Little we see in Nature that is ours . . .” I wholly agree with the words of the young poet, William Wordsworth, who is a member of my bookseller’s Dissenting literary circle, along with William Blake, Tom Paine,William Godwin, and the rogue, Henry Fuseli (my obsession, my unrequited love. My nemesis.).

I love my friends and my siblings, although they are always asking for money and I earn little of that. I love my generous bookseller-publisher, but oh I would change all the unfair laws and customs for women. Most eighteenth-century males consider females “children of a larger growth,” did you know that? Indeed! When I wrote my Vindication for the Rights of Woman, calling for political, legal and economic equality, they labelled me a hyena in petticoats. How it hurts, how it damages my nerves! But I persevere. I want to transform the entire world.

SA: Where and when were you born? What were the strongest influences upon you before you solved your first mystery?

Mary: I was born April 27, 1759 in London. As a boy my father was apprenticed to his father, a silk weaver. But after receiving an inheritance as eldest son, he abandoned the craft to become a gentleman farmer—and failed. The failures turned him into a drunkard and wife-beater. I would lie on the landing in front of my parents’ chamber to keep him away from my mother. And now my elder brother Ned has become his greedy father. How I loathe the law of primogeniture where the eldest son gets everything, and will not give a farthing to his siblings!

I left home at nineteen to be caregiver for a tyrannical woman and then became a governess at Mitchelstown Castle in Ireland, home of the notorious Kingsboroughs, who were arrogant and niggardly. I got my revenge by putting them in my first (autobiographical) novel, Mary, A Fiction. They dismissed me after ten months and inspired me to live independent or not at all!

SA: As a woman in eighteenth-century England, obviously you would have no opportunity to join a police force (had one existed) or become any kind of professional investigator. How and why, then, did you become a sleuth?

Mary: Police force? Professional investigator? Heavens no! I am an educator and writer. I slipped into the role of sleuth through the peculiar bent of my nature. I cannot tolerate sham or oppression of any sort. In my twenties, I kidnapped my postpartum sister from an abusive husband. We raced through town, changing carriages to dupe the hotheaded spouse, while Bess, poor girl, bit her wedding ring into pieces!

Later, on my way back from Portugal where my beloved Fanny died in my arms (I’ll never get over it), I compelled the biased English captain to turn the ship about to rescue a sinking boatload of French sailors. Soon I am to journey to Paris as a war correspondent for the French Revolution. How could I not respond to Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité! How could I not try to help the poor, the innocent, the victimized?

SA: Tell me about your most recent investigation, if you please.

Mary: My Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published with praise from the liberal thinkers and disparaging remarks from conservatives—I was called a “philosophical wanton”! But it was not the criticism that held me back this year of 1792, it was “writer’s block.” And all because of Henry Fuseli. I was obsessed. I knew it was foolish: He was vain, deceitful, a womanizer. But he was a genius. His conversation glittered, each word a shooting star; his paintings hung everywhere in the known world.

His masterpiece “The Nightmare” both fascinated and horrified me. That naked, sleeping woman with the little goblin on her chest. But the painting was stolen! And a young critic of Henry’s put in prison and then a madhouse for the theft. It was that devil Fuseli had him put there. And then my bluestocking friend was strangled and arranged to resemble that erotic painting. I could not stand by and watch events unfold. My quest for truth sent me into dungeons and dramhouses, into confrontations with a dozen abhorrent rogues. I tell you I never want to see that misogynist Fuseli again. They say he even destroyed my letters without reading them! Another heinous crime, was it not?

SA: What’s going on in the world around you during your investigation? Are the mysteries tied to contemporary historical events?

Mary: In Midnight Fires, the mystery is tied to the tumultuous events in Ireland where I was governess: in particular to the plight of the poor peasants, exploited by their Anglo-Irish landlords; I found myself involved with a radical group called the Defenders.

Back in London, I was part of my Unitarian publisher’s radical circle. Unitarians, who had their own chapels but did not observe the Anglican creed, could not hold office or attend Oxford or Cambridge. Unfair! So they started their own schools—for boys, that is—I am trying to change that. Females must educate themselves and not be pawns of their fathers and husbands! Some Unitarians like my dear friend Joseph Priestley had their homes and labs burned by the King’s mob. Unconscionable!

Of course in 1792 we are all thrilled by the promise of full equality offered by the French Revolution. In Paris I might even take a husband for the time being, ha! and then obtain a divorce—for divorce has recently become legal in that nation.

SA: What about the last decades of the eighteenth century do you think is most relevant to those of us who live in the early twenty-first century?

Mary: As I suggested above, it is the advent of freedoms (religion, press, et al.) and of women’s rights. I expect you twenty-first^-century women take for granted the rights I struggle for, but there are still men and women in your era, I wager, trying to take them away! I believe in the perfectibility of mankind, but doubt I will live to see it. So many intolerant religious groups in every land and era, trying to tell one how to live. Were I alive in your century, I would still be shouting the wrongs of woman to the world. Equal pay for equal labor! A woman’s right to her own body! The right to have an education! But are there not women in your era who receive only the most minimal schooling?

SA: What would you say to twenty-first-century people who complain that surely “this is the worst time ever to be alive?

Mary: I would remind them of Cicero’s statement in 43 BC: “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.” Or send them to a certain author, somewhat after my time, Mr. Dickens, who will write: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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

Mary: In The Nightmare, a chase through a madhouse, a descent into a dark wine cellar, a race down the Thames River to rescue my young ward who had been captured by—well, I mustn’t be a spoiler for my own book, must I? But the madhouse, that was the most terrifying. Black dogs on the threshold straining for my throat, and a raving, raven of a matron to keep the wretched inmates in line—my own brother Henry, for example. My parents swore us to secrecy when he went slowly, inexorably mad, committed a horrendous crime (I cannot divulge the nature of this crime or my mother’s ghost will forever haunt me) and was put into an institution. “Don’t tell. Don’t tell. Don’t tell,” my parents pleaded, wringing their hands. And I am not telling. Do you wonder why I place my protagonist Maria, in my manuscript, The Wrongs of Woman, in a madhouse?

SA: A culprit whom you unmask might very well be executed for his or her crime. What is your view of capital punishment?

Mary: I do not believe in it—even though the punishments have become more “humane” than in earlier times, when a person might be drawn and quartered or put on the rack or hanged slowly until dead. There are still horrendous deaths that the fickle populace regards as entertainment. The new French guillotine, for example, is termed “merciful.” You lie face down on a plank which is then tipped under the cutting knife and swish! Your head falls into a basket. You are no longer you. God have mercy! Have you ever walked in puddles of blood? No? Well, I have. The blood clings to the soles of one’s shoes. It sullies the soul. Would I could annihilate the guillotine and all capital punishment with it!

SA: Have you ever made an error during an investigation? Has anyone been wrongly punished because of your actions? If so, how do you live with that?

Mary: I have not made an error as such, but I have struggled with my conscience. In Midnight Fires a character commits a crime in a moment of passion to save a child. It was not premeditated. Should he/she die for that? No, I say. One must see the black and white of it. The larger picture. One must examine one’s own conscience and say, ‘What would I have done were my own child or sibling at fault?  Is there no second chance for me? Must I die for this moment of mania?’

And yes, I have had to live with my sister’s kidnapping. We left the child behind, a girl named Mary, after myself. And the bully husband would not give her back, for the babe was his, he said, by law (another law I must overturn). Could I not have rescued the child? But I did not and the poor thing died within a year from lack of care. I live with that guilt daily. Each time I send some conflicted soul to Newgate prison, I find myself shrinking, my heart too heavy to bear. What could I have done to prevent that criminal act? We human beings are all so frail, so imperfect (so much for perfectibility). Who are we to judge what is right and what is wrong?

SA: And to conclude, is there, perhaps, some infuriating person whom you would like to murder—though of course you would not?

Mary: Henry Fuseli. Henry Fuseli. Henry Fuseli!

The Nightmare is available in trade paperback and as an eBook from Perseverance Press.

Nancy Means Wright has published sixteen books, including five mysteries from St Martin’s Press, and most recently two historicals featuring real-life English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft: The Nightmare (Perseverance, 2011) and Midnight Fires (2010). Her children’s mysteries received an Agatha Award and Agatha nomination. Short stories have appeared in American Literary Review, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and elsewhere. Longtime teacher, actress-director, and Bread Loaf Scholar for a first novel, Nancy lives with her spouse and two Maine Coon cats in Middlebury, Vermont. Visit her author website at www.nancymeanswright.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, all from St. Martin’s Press) and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in eBook form and in hardcover and/or trade paperback via Amazon.com and other major retailers.

Bearing a dispatch from his commander in coastal Wilmington, North Carolina, redcoat Lieutenant Michael Stoddard arrives in Hillsborough in February 1781 in civilian garb. He expects to hand a letter to a courier working for Lord Cornwallis, then ride back to Wilmington the next day. Instead, Michael is greeted by the courier’s freshly murdered corpse, a chilling trail of clues leading back to an execution ten years earlier, and a sheriff with a fondness for framing innocents—and plans to deliver Michael up to his nemesis, a psychopathic British officer.

Susanne Alleyn: What year is it now for you, Mr. Stoddard?

Michael Stoddard: It is March of the year 1781, almost five years after fifty-six representatives from His Majesty’s thirteen North American colonies declared independence from the rule of Britain. Wishful thinking on their part, perhaps. For here I am stationed in the port town of Wilmington, North Carolina, with nearly three hundred infantrymen and artillerymen: the King’s finest.

SA: Why are you in Wilmington, may I ask?

Stoddard: My unit, the Eighty-Second Infantry Regiment, occupied Wilmington in late January, madam. Unfavorable winds delayed our landing for three days, thus only the gods know why so many of Wilmington’s rebels were caught by surprise when we finally marched on the town. Many took little with them when they fled in advance of our approach. They left behind their unoccupied homes. As a result, good officers have had little difficulty finding decent lodging. I admit to having grown weary, moving hither and yon during my nine years in the Army. Thus my billet on Second Street, and the comfortable bed in which I sleep, come as quite a pleasant change.

SA: Would you rather be somewhere else?

Stoddard: Almost anywhere else. I’ve been stationed in Georgia and South Carolina for a year and haven’t yet acquired a fondness for hailstorms or tropical heat. Mosquitoes and ticks appear ubiquitous in America but seem larger and more aggressive in the South. I anticipate summer on the coast of North Carolina to deliver a similar experience. But of course, I dutifully serve His Majesty wherever I’m sent.

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

Stoddard: I find it stimulating that a man of common birth like myself can become a military officer—thus the presumption among all but the jaded that such a man is a gentleman. You see, in times past, an officer’s commission was only open to a man gently born. Yet in my time, the son of a merchant—Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton being a prime example—may purchase a commission. And during wartime, further advancement is even possible without additional purchase of commissions. For a man who claims the military as his career, the prospects are excellent.

I’m undecided as to whether my future lies in the military. Far more fascinating to me are the strides merchants and artisans have made to attain financial security and even prosperity. It’s no myth that a poor man in America with just a few pennies to his name, a man with talent and intelligence, may through perseverance and years of hard work find himself living comfortably in a home of his own, well before the end of his days. But I suspect that you don’t comprehend what a rare and admirable quality this is in a land, in its people. In pursuit of this comfortable place where men are neither very wealthy nor very poor, merchants and artisans in America have stridden farther and more quickly than their counterparts in Britain. Cherish and protect this financial oasis of the middle ground.

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

Stoddard: Perhaps this will come as a surprise to you, but I sympathize to a degree with those in America who have desired independence from Britain. Many who wear the King’s scarlet do so, too—including Charles, Lord Cornwallis. At home in England, in the coffee shops and teahouses and taverns, men label this military action by its true name: a war brought down upon us by wealthy, powerful statesmen who purport to listen to the people but are deafened by the siren song of their own greed. Britain, now all-but-bankrupt, has hemorrhaged two generations of sons in America. My mother’s only brother died on the Plains of Abraham fighting for the great General Wolfe. Now that this insurrection has dragged out six years into apparent stalemate, a number of us would rather be on a front where we might be of use.

Thus if I could change matters, I would have the peace commission headed by the Earl of Carlisle reach agreement with the Continental Congress back in 1778. Had the Congress not been so bloody insistent on being gratified with immediate and full independence, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation today, madam.

SA: I quite agree, sir. So what about your background?

Stoddard: I was born in the year 1754, in Yorkshire, England, and am approaching my twenty-seventh birthday. My father, Abraham, is a poor stonemason. It was his blacksmith brother, my uncle Solomon, who arranged for me to work in Lord Crump’s mews and tend his falcons when I was eleven years of age. Three years later, while still working for Lord Crump, I discovered that his gamekeeper and steward were stealing from him.

By stealing, I don’t mean shooting a buck on the peer’s estate to feed hungry mouths in a poor man’s family. (I presume you appreciate such tactics from Robin Hood.) You see, the gamekeeper and steward weren’t poor men, and their families had plenty to eat. When they stole from Lord Crump, it was to feed their own greed. Full of themselves they became, and they played Lord Crump for an old fool. I brought my observations to his lordship. He and the butler devised a way to track the criminals’ thefts and entrap them. In short order, they were dismissed from his service, none the wiser who had tipped their hand.

Three years later, Uncle Solomon approached Lord Crump about assisting in the purchase of an ensign’s commission. His lordship had no son of his own. Ever grateful for my keen observation skills where the gamekeeper and steward were involved, he responded in a generous manner and bade me make something of myself in the Army as an officer.

SA: Most interesting! So how and why, after your first successful bit of sleuthing at fourteen, did you become an official investigator?

Stoddard: Several commanding officers have assigned me to investigate criminal activity. Upon the Eighty-Second Regiment’s arrival in Wilmington, Major James Henry Craig assigned me the position of lead investigator. I promptly selected Private Nick Spry as my assistant, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

SA: Describe some contemporary techniques that you use, if any.

Stoddard: “Contemporary” investigative techniques, madam? I wager that basic techniques of investigation have changed little in 230 years and that, if asked, twenty-first century investigators will tell you that the skill of talking with people and extracting details is the most valuable technique an investigator possesses. I’ve been assured that I’ve a face without guile, an “honest face,” and I admit to using that to my advantage. My second most valuable skill would be that of observation, whether it’s to catalogue details at the scene of a crime or upon a murder victim, follow a suspect, or perform surveillance upon his place of business. I’ve also compared handwriting samples and firearm balls, assessed the spattering of bloodstains, and performed an analysis of fibers using a magnifying lens.

For my most recent investigation, circumstances necessitated that I dress in civilian clothing. Out of desperation, I tried something new. I used a witness’s description and the talent of a skilled local artist to produce a likeness in charcoal sketch of a suspect. Surprisingly, it advanced the investigation.

SA: Tell me about your most recent case, which is, I believe, recounted in Regulated for Murder by one Suzanne Adair.

Stoddard: Scarcely a week after the Eighty-Second Regiment’s occupation of Wilmington, Major Craig assigned me to ride five days northwest and meet a loyalist in Hillsborough, North Carolina who knew the location of Lord Cornwallis. The dispatch I carried with me would apprise Lord Cornwallis that his strategy to use the town of Cross Creek as a supply depot could not be implemented, due to interference from the rebels. I traveled through territory unfriendly to the Crown, and the people of Hillsborough had no great love of His Majesty. Thus I traveled in civilian clothing and concealed my identity.

Alas, I found my loyalist contact in Hillsborough brutally slain. The town sheriff’s inclination was to accuse me of the deed and prove that I was not who I said I was. A quirk of Fate initially spared me incarceration, and the sheriff instead deputized me to find the murderer. At first, I went along with the game to save my own hide, perhaps find a way to sneak out of town so I could complete my original mission. But as evidence unfolded, I realized that the sheriff and his men were monsters who hoped to manipulate me into producing evidence that would implicate several innocent people in town.

And I was shocked to uncover a link between the loyalist’s murderer and executions ten years earlier of leaders of a failed rebellion—and nefarious deeds performed beneath the cover of those executions. Never before had I solved a crime so far in the past, one for which a rebellion and executions had scattered most of the witnesses.

Yes, I saw justice served. Did I complete my original mission? I fervently hope so.

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

Stoddard: The military might of His Majesty is stretched thin, occupied on a number of fronts against the French, the Spanish, and the Dutch. In particular, the North American engagement has proven a challenge.
Truthfully, after six very expensive years of war, His Majesty doesn’t appear to be making much headway at subduing the colonial insurrection. Valiant actions and imbecilic decisions have been made aplenty on both sides. But the King’s finest men battle on rebel soil. The hands of the attrition clock speed forward for us, while rebels have merely to await the exhaustion of our resources. I do wonder whether Parliament realizes that.

SA: What about your world do you think is most relevant to those of us who live in the early 21st century?

Stoddard: Insurrections and revolutions are commonplace throughout history. Few evolve into a stable, intact system of government, sustainable for generations. Those that do are worthy of study by statesmen and citizens alike.

SA: And what would you say to 21st-century people who complain about hard times (and what seems like more than our usual share of natural disasters) and declare that “God must have decided that the end of the world is due any day”?

Stoddard: Could you transport yourself to my time, you’d find many who believe the end of the world was soon forthcoming. Both the Congress and Parliament are ineffective, full of more hot air than the deserts of Arabia. Unemployment rages throughout Britain. The land of America is populated with religious fanatics, themselves descendants of the fanatics who left Britain more than a century earlier.

Natural disasters? Nearly every year that I’ve been stationed in North America, at least one hurricane has affected the colonies; last year, 1780, the greatest of all storms killed more than 20,000 people in the Caribbean and sank British and French ships. This you call the end of the world.

Do pay attention to the goodness in your own world. For example, amazing feats of the sciences allow you to visit other worlds, more than double the lifespan of adults and reduce deaths among infants, and enjoy instant communication with people thousands of miles away.

You of the 21st century believe that times past were somehow different, simpler, more idyllic. I tell you the rigors of the world don’t change and have been with us always, taking the same forms. I’ve been a soldier nine years. I’ve seen that we carry the portmanteau of human nature with us wherever we go. Even were we to transport ourselves to another world, one with pink skies and twenty-mile-high mountains, the end of the world would follow us because we carry it with us.

Regulated for Murder is available as an eBook from Amazon.com.

Award-winning novelist Suzanne Adair is a Florida native who lives in a two hundred-year-old city at the edge of the North Carolina Piedmont, named for an English explorer who was beheaded. Her suspense and thrillers transport readers to the Southern theater of the Revolutionary War, where she brings historic towns, battles, and people to life. She fuels her creativity with Revolutionary War reenacting and visits to historic sites. Visit her at her author website, www.suzanneadair.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 and of A Far Better Rest, the reimagining of A Tale of Two Cities, all available in eBook form and in hardcover and/or trade paperback via Amazon.com and other major retailers.