The historical mystery is a curious thing. Why worry about a crime that took place decades—centuries—ago? Surely it’s been long solved, with both victim and villain moldering in their graves. The past, after all, is a foreign country, one we may not have a visa for.
But as the writer of historicals, I find it’s not always that clear-cut. Instead, off I’ll set for my own little corner of the Twentieth century—the 1920s—looking forward to a nice long escape from reality as I immerse myself in the mores and customs, fashions and foibles, dusty technology and quaintly simple lives of that sepia-toned world…only to discover the modern age has come along, too, and now stands behind my shoulder, snarling in my ear.
Take the book I wrote last year. I anticipated—no: I knew, all of us did, wherever we were on the political spectrum—that 2017 was going to be tough. Even before January appeared on the calendar, we could feel the build-up of animosity and chaos, vicious slanders and dark impulses, the kinds of evil, festering wounds that only fear and fury can cause.
And the book I was set to write during this time? My ‘nice long escape’ into a gentler realm of history? A book that had been thoroughly discussed with my editor, laid out in a signed contract, and for which the research and planning were already under way? That book was supposed to take place in the Tower of London. Which, yes, is all scarlet uniforms and crown jewels and tourists photographing the ravens. But it is also the gloomiest, most blood-soaked patch of real estate in all of England, a place of hangings, beheadings, and ritualized governmental torture.
We had an election and I joined the weeping and gnashing of teeth, and then I did my best to distance myself and push ahead with a tale of Twenties London.Still, I tried. We had an election and I joined the weeping and gnashing of teeth, and then I did my best to distance myself and push ahead with a tale of Twenties London and the discovery of some long-ago misdeed in the Tower. Surely this, of all my books, could be infinitely appropriate to modern times? After all, the Twenties were as wild and free-wheeling as any corner of our own century. Every bit as incomprehensible, as rife with misunderstandings and divisions between races, religions, and economic levels.
And just as the iniquities of the 1920s would find a parallel in some criminal act of previous ages, so would the reader be shown a third and more personal level as my story unfolded. The Tower in the Twenties: a palimpsest of events, rich ground for a historical mystery, with a place and time that reflected the political ruthlessness of the past as well as the seeds of the next World War. A powerful metaphor for our own era, a story that…
I simply couldn’t. Oh, the threads were there, and they were precisely the sorts of threads I look for when a book is coming together in my mind, but the thought of weaving this particular tale together, of living with it over the course of the coming months, filled me with despair. Nausea.
I should perhaps mention that I’m a fairly phlegmatic sort of a person, as apolitical as they come, with absolutely no suicidal tendencies. I compartmentalize really well, and it’s not as if I imagined headlines about the actual drawing-and-quartering of political enemies. But…
But the thought of living all day, every day, with both the real and the fictional sides of my life drenched in bleak wickedness would have even me eyeing the veins in my wrists.
When the publishing world came back to work after the New Year, I picked up the phone and called my editor. She listened, admitted that there was little she could do to change the politics of 2017, and gave me her blessing to turn away from the darkness—at least when it came to my writing life.
So with a feeling of burdens lifted, I abandoned the Tower and seized wholeheartedly on one of my back-burner ideas, a story filled with the light, color, and festivity of summertime Venice in 1925. Cole Porter and Elsa Maxwell! Silken beach pajamas on the Lido! Short skirts and fringes, daring swimming costumes and sunburned faces, fireworks and raucous parties, loose morals and wild dancing and lolling in the sand!
And—oh, right: Fascists.
Yes. No sooner do I seize on Venice as a nice cheery place to send my series characters (and myself! Because it’s been a while since I’ve been, and my readers demand solid research, right?) and start flipping through my mental filing cabinet labeled Events of 1925 when I come up with…Mussolini.
In January 1925, 92 years and 17 days before Donald Trump took his oath of office, Benito Mussolini had declared himself the dictator of Italy, lighting a match to the Fascist flame that engulfed Europe and the century. A flame that just keeps springing back to life.
True, in 1925 we find Venice considerably more insulated from the effects of Il Duce’s reign than many other places in Italy. What—trouble the wealthy foreigners who load the coffers with dollars, francs, and pounds sterling? Assolutamente no! Still, Venice is Italy. The Blackshirts are there. An innocent can be kicked to death beside a canal as easily as in a Roman street.
It may be no accident that the figure I chose as the city’s very essence of frivolity and joy, the man whose music and lyrics bubble over with wit and humor and life—Cole Porter—was a man who spent his every day torn between the woman he loved and the men he desired.
Light casts shadows; color is brighter against the dark; festivity is even more frenetic when it springs from despair. And our own reflection is never more compelling than when we see it in a mirror dimmed by age: our face with sepia shades, obscured by patches of deterioration, leaving no doubt that what we are seeing is us, transplanted to then.
And our own reflection is never more compelling than when we see it in a mirror dimmed by age: our face with sepia shades, obscured by patches of deterioration, leaving no doubt that what we are seeing is us, transplanted to then.That is a large part of why we read—and why I write—historical crime fiction. With it, I can shape a tale that is both unabashedly escapist and also reverberates with something deeper. If I write an “entertainment” (as Graham Greene called his) about spies and aristocrats and country house parties, I can string those baubles together on a thread of Great War iniquities and the devastations of shell shock. If I send my characters to an exotic place such as pre-Independence India or Japan on the edge of change, I can ground the play of mystery with the weighty implications of colonialism and international politics. A delicate balance is required, to be sure, since nothing is more off-putting than the scent of the soapbox in a novel. But when is balance not required of any piece of writing?
Historical fiction shows us our own face through a glass, darkly. We pick up a story, whether as reader or writer, for the sun and sequins and prosecco; we put it down having been entertained—but also touched, just a bit, by an awareness of the bigger world.
And something else. Because this is fiction I am writing, and because the story unfolds in a place that is both known and not-known, I am free to play God. I have the power to right one small wrong of history, giving freedom to a prisoner and hope to a woman bereft. I can stick out my toe and cause the powerful to stumble, just a bit, while the rest of us glide on sure-footed. My subversive acts may be limited, since I cannot move the actual pillars of history, but I can nudge matters just enough to suggest a path forward to a wounded Cole Porter, setting free a lifetime of songs to hum beneath our breath.
And that is why we love historical mysteries. Because the crime took place decades ago, but it is also taking place today. Because their characters are dimmed by age, yet seem like us, with uncertain boundaries that let all things feel possible.
Because they are entertainments, with a razor’s edge of reality.
