INSPIRATION FOR SNIFTER OF DEATH
As a retired detective, I was often asked if I planned to write cop stories. I explained I wasn’t really interested in writing a contemporary cop story. I didn’t want to relive my career through my books. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy a good cop story. I love Connelly’s Bosch and Sandford’s Virgil Flowers characters.
For several years I wrote mainly historical romances with a time travel element. They had contemporary and medieval settings in every book. One required my heroine, a modern London attorney, to present a criminal case in front of King Edward III, a case where she was both the victim and the accused. The year was 1355.
During the writing of that scene, I started thinking about writing a detective but with a historical setting. I wanted him to be an old fashioned detective, one who didn’t have today’s science available to help him solve his cases. He and his partner have to rely on old fashioned police work to gather evidence and figure out which leads to follow. I had the benefit of science. When I wrote Detective Rudyard Bloodstone, my detective hero in Silk and Snifter of Death, I had to walk the crime scenes with him. As I created the scene and had him work it, I had to think the entire time what can he take from the scene? What is he seeing, smelling, touching, evaluating as worthwhile evidence?
I enjoy using the medieval setting for my romances but I didn’t want that for my detective. The most atmospheric place I could think of for murder stories was Victorian London. It has everything. There’s the brilliantly visual difference between the classes. The upper class traveling through the city in shiny black horse-drawn carriages, ladies in elegant gowns, even the streetlamps are beautiful wrought iron. Then, there’s the contrast of the east end slums where Jack the Ripper hunted his prey, the eerie fog London was famous for rising off the lawns of Hyde Park, and the narrow alleyways with their twists and turns. To me, the time and city presented a perfect canvas for Detective Bloodstone to work.
In both Silk and Snifter of Death, the killer is revealed at the start. I wanted to put the reader in the killer’s head for much of the story. I liked sharing how the killer thinks. Throughout both I move between Det. Bloodstone’s POV and the killer’s POV.
I also enjoy giving Rudyard a colorful group of friends and some enemies to fill his day. It makes writing his world especially fun. That’s another reason I like the Victorian setting. I have a good time playing with the language of the period and the cultural attitudes.
In Snifter I gave Rudyard a special lady. The relationship is a subplot as the main story revolves around the murders and him finding the killer. Giving him a special lady helped expand his world, which is what we writers strive for. It was also something my readers wanted. Many had read my historical romances and wanted Rudyard to have more romance in his life. I loved writing a lady worthy of him.
I hope down the road to write a third book. In Snifter of Death, I introduce Rudyard’s brother. I hope to bring him back. Right now, I’m in the process of writing book five of my Knights in Time series and hope to have that in release early next year.
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