Review of No Game for a Dame and Tough Cookie: A Gendered Twist on the Classic Detective Genre
As any one who has read my own work might guess, I enjoy historical mysteries with a strong female protagonist who is working. And, therefore, it is no surprise how delighted I was when I found M. Ruth Myer’s mystery series featuring Maggie Sullivan, a sassy female detective. I initially gave the first book in Myer’s series, No Game for a Dame, a try because I am a fan of the hard-boiled detective mysteries of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett that are set in the 1930s and 1940s. And boy, am I glad I did. What fun it was to see the classic themes of this genre played out with a female private eye, in a book that stayed absolutely faithful to the historical time and place, late 1930’s Dayton, Ohio. In No Game for a Dame Myers did a Read more…
Historical Fiction that Influenced Me
I have decided to start putting up reviews on my blog. These will be primarily of interest to those people who are fans of my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and might therefore be interested in what books I like to read. I remember how Dana Stabenow in one of her earliest Kate Shugak mysteries listed the books in Kate’s cabin. I assumed they reflected Stabenow’s own literary tastes, which were very similar to my own, and I remember thinking this was one of the reasons I enjoyed these mysteries set in the Alaskan wilderness so much. So I thought that readers might enjoy getting a glimpse into what literature influenced me, and conversely be influenced to pick up some of these books to read for themselves. This first post is a repost of an article I did for the Read more…
“The Dude Abides:” Changing Definitions of Words and Historical Fiction
Yesterday, as I was searching for descriptions of San Francisco Theaters in 1880 (I am hoping to have a scene in a theater in my next historical mystery, Bloody Lessons), I ran across the following paragraph and laughed out loud. “Last evening, as I was hurriedly walking along Dupont street, near Post, in the gloaming, I saw before me a young dude, who, instead of minding his business of walking decently, was projecting his face and hat into the visage of his girl companion to the left, while with his dexter paw he twirled a light cane, which extended half way across the curbstone, and which I tried to escape, but which, notwithstanding, hit me square upon my nose, which is a long one.” Etiquette on the Street, by Silver Pen in San Francisco News Letter and California Advertiser Jan Read more…
Two-Day Sale of Victorian Mystery Books on Kindle
I don’t usually just post when I am doing a promotion, but I am experimenting this time with a pre-Holiday promotion of my two Victorian San Francisco Mystery novels so I thought I would let you all in on the experiment. Uneasy Spirits, the sequel in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series is FREE on KINDLE for two days, Tuesday-Wednesday, December 11-12, 2012. Here is the link for the U.S. Kindle Store, and the U.K. Store. A second part of the experiment is to offer the first book in the series, Maids of Misfortune, for 99 cents for the same two days that the sequel is on sale. While I know there are lots of people out there who already have Maids of Misfortune and are going to be glad to pick up the sequel for free, I wondered if those Read more…
Tools to use to Recreate the Past: Annie Fuller’s Boarding House
I am working on Bloody Lessons, the third book of my historical mystery series, which means I am wrestling once again with how adequately and accurately to portray the past, in this case 1880 San Francisco. This led me to the idea of describing some of the tools I used in creating the historical background for my protagonist’s home, which appeared first in Maids of Misfortune and will continue to play a role in all of my books, a boarding house in the 400 block of O’Farrell Street of San Francisco, between Jones and Taylor. First of all, as Susanne Alleyn points out in her clever and very readable book, Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders: A Writer’s (and Editor’s) Guide to Keeping Historical Fiction Free of Common Anachronisms, Errors, and Myth, an author of historical fiction needs to recognize that Read more…
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