#booknews #protips #friends #reviews #suggest
This is Mystery Ahead, the
newsletter for readers and writers. Together, we find out what makes for a compelling mystery.
Remember to share! Friends love mysteries, too. #booknews The first Detective Emilia Cruz audiobook is here! CLIFF DIVER, Detective Emilia Cruz #1, has been released as an audiobook by Tantor Media.
Award-winning voice talent Johanna Parker is the narrator.
PS: Got Audible? Remember to leave a review.
#protips If you want to give readers an authentic setting, they need to experience it through all 5 senses. Almost anything can be used as a vehicle for this: food, weather, holidays, fashion, etc. Cast a wide net to give yourself the greatest amount of data from
which to pull. Check YouTube, museum websites, travel tip sites, recipes, etc.
Keep all this great background information organized and retrievable with a board on Pinterest or a page on Facebook. More so than the Evernote app or a pile of paper, Pinterest and Facebook offer the opportunity
to share “behind the scenes” research with readers and build interest before the book is published.
#friends This month I’m thrilled to host Brian Stoddart, author of the Superintendent Le Fanu historical mystery series set in India in the 1920’s. Think Sherlock Holmes meets The
Jewel in the Crown, with a bit of my favorite thriller, too.
1. Carmen Amato: Brian, thanks so much for stopping by. I love historical mysteries that teach me something and your Superintendent Le Fanu series set in
1920’s India reminds me of the BBC’s Jewel in the Crown, with a touch of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts thrown in for verve. Tell us how you came to write such a complex and fascinating series.
Brian Stoddart: My PhD research was on modern nationalist politics in South India, and even as an academic I thought that those times and events
had great dramatic qualities. That backdrop immediately allowed me to develop characters and events that were based in the historical record and, as we all know, truth is often more fascinating than fiction.
Some of the characters in the Le Fanu novels really did exist, and around them I can orbit fictional characters who also draw off people who were working at that time.
The detailed historical knowledge allows me, then, to weave these stories in detail.
That said, I have had also to revisit Madras (now Chennai) as a writer rather than historian, because the city is as much a character as the people. Knowing the city well has allowed me to make the blend and set a place that is different, exotic but knowable. I am delighted that readers have felt that they
learned something from the stories as well as being entertained by them.
2. CA: How do you create multi-dimensional fictional characters, including your lead character Le Fanu? Where do you look for inspiration when creating characters?
BS: Those historical characters who lurk behind my fictional ones were all multi-dimensional and complex, often controversial, frequently combative and sometimes illogical. All those traits feed into Le Fanu and his colleagues as well as his opponents.
For example, I wrote a biography of an Anglo-Italian named Arthur Galletti who served in Madras and was the archetypal square peg in a round hole: anti-authority, hugely intelligent, socially awkward, pro-Indian and all the rest. Others were themselves writers who questioned the British regime. All of this feeds easily into creating characters who belong in the
time. So that inspiration comes from the past and the historical record.
The other influence is from other writers and seeing how they create characters who live. Among my favorites are writers like Evelyn Waugh, Ian Rankin, Kate Atkinson, Parker Bilal, Fred Vargas – this is by no means
exhaustive but will give you the idea. I also draw ideas and influence from television writers like Sally Wainwright, Anthony Horowitz, Neil Cross and others, because they create visuals that transfer well into print.
3. CA: Le Fanu has a personal relationship that
was not allowed under British law in India at that time. How will this impact his decision-making as the series goes on?
BS: It was not so much “not allowed” to have a relationship between European and Anglo-Indian (mixed race) as severely damaging to a reputation and
career, much the same if not even more so as a relationship between European and India. That is a trope for several novels, of course, beginning with E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India.
I use Le Fanu’s complicated relationship with Roisin (Ro) McPhedren almost as a lodestone to that
complex matter of race relations in India at the time, and that shows up in how some other European characters relate (or do not relate) to Indians both professionally and personally. By definition, the relationship will continue to bear on Le Fanu’s life as a whole, and be something of an allegory for the broader relationship patterns as independence nears for India.
At the same time, the relationship allows me to explore the nuances of all this community-based activity in British India: Anglo-Indians who dominated the railway services, the missionaries who brought another corrective, the European business classes who had different outlooks again, and a range of others. India was all about relationships, in many respects, and Ro helps focus that.
Brian is a New Zealand-based but globally engaged writer whose historical crime fiction is based in Madras, India of the 1920s. He trained as an historian, and worked as an academic in Australia, Malaysia, Canada and the Caribbean before becoming a university executive and later an international consultant on World Bank, Asian Development Bank and European Union projects in Cambodia, Laos, Jordan, and Syria. Follow him at www.brianstoddartwriter.com. #reviews A MADRAS MIASMA is the first in a
historical mystery series by New Zealand author Brian Stoddart that takes us to India in 1920 with an extraordinary sense of place and time. India is on the brink of explosion and the murder mystery is a lit fuse on the powder keg.
British colonial authority is in jeopardy. Indian
society is stratified and divided. Discontent and political unrest simmers.
Enter Superintendent Christian Le Fanu, Indian Police Service in Madras (today’s Chennai), who stands on both sides of the deepening divide. A combat veteran of WWI, with an aversion to blood, he’s English yet
has little tying him to England where his soon-to-be-ex-wife has fled. A long-time resident of India, he’s part of the British ruling class but not in it. He doesn’t live in the British enclave part of town, his familiarity with Indian ways got booted him out of the golf club, he gives his Muslim Indian sergeant real responsibility, and he is secretly sleeping with his Anglo-Indian housekeeper. Roisin is smart and attractive but her mixed ethnicity makes her a pariah.
Le Fanu and Sergeant Habi investigate the murder of a young British woman whose body is dumped in a polluted canal, prompting a terrific first line and an immediate sense of place. She’s identified as one of the “fishing fleet,” young women who come to India from Britain “fishing” for a husband. She made the rounds
of parties, meeting diplomats, military officers, and other denizens of the upper crust of colonial society. The autopsy reveals that the woman had sex and took morphine before death.
The investigation proceeds in a series of interviews conducted with excruciating British politeness. In
between, Le Fanu has to placate the higher-ups, including the impeccably drawn martinet Arthur Jepson, who habitually cracks his riding crop against his shoe. Most secondary characters are historical figures, accounting for so many surnames starting with “W.” MIASMA is meticulously researched and it shows.
Le Fanu’s murder investigation implicates important British figures in Madras. At the same time, an Indian demonstration prompts British troops to fire into the crowd, killing many. The political fallout from the massacre shakes the entire ruling structure in India, making Le Fanu’s own position precarious. He’s an appealing guy in a sea of political cut-throats,
but there are exploitable chinks in his armor.
In many ways, A MADRAS MIASMA reminded me of Ken Follett’s THE KEY TO REBECCA set in WWII Egypt; the crowded, noisy and politically precarious setting, the rigidity and stuffiness of British colonial rule, a British officer who has sympathy
toward the local population and rides a motorcycle.
No Nazi spies in 1920, of course. Stoddart stays authentic to the world he’s pulled us into, with villains whose moral codes have been replaced by a sense of abiding privilege.
A miasma for the British as their Empire erodes. A must-read for historical mystery lovers.
#suggest Reader Tom F. had a suggestion about the Detective Emilia Cruz series and graciously consented to share:
“Hola Carmen. I have read all five novels and really enjoy the series. I especially like the regular use of Spanish phrases. I've been going to Cozumel for the past twelve years or so and have picked up a smattering of Spanish. But I am presently learning to speak and understand Spanish more fully and your books are helping me
learn.
“As much as I enjoy the series, however, Emilia is becoming a little annoying with regards to her relationship with Kurt. I'm a happy ending guy so I want them to solidify their relationship but if her psyche is so flawed that she can't recognize how good this relationship is, it might
be time for Kurt to end it.”
Oye!
What do you think Kurt should
do?
That's all for this edition of Mystery Ahead!
Until
next time, keep reading and keep exploring the mystery ahead :)
All the best, Carmen
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