The 2008 Agatha nomineeshave been announced and author Kathy Lynn Emerson’s book, How to Write a Killer Historical Mystery, is on the Best Non-fiction list. The core of the book is Emerson’s personal take on writing and selling historical mysteries, but it also includes practical advice, anecdotes, and suggestions for research from over forty other historical mystery writers and insights from assorted editors, booksellers, and reviewers.
This is Emerson’s second foray into the how-to genre, having also published The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England in 1996.
As the author of two popular historical mystery series, the Face Down Mysteries featuring Elizabethan gentlewoman herbalist Susanna, Lady Appleton, and the Diana Spaulding Mysteries, set in 1888 in various U.S. locations featuring journalist Diana Spaulding, she certainly knows her stuff.
We first meet Susanna, Lady Appleton, in Face Down in the Marrow-Bone Pie, the first of eleven titles in the Elizabethan series. When the family steward dies in a highly suspicious manner, she takes advantage of her husband's absence on a political mission for Queen Elizabeth to investigate the man’s mysterious demise. A serving wench claims that he was frightened to death by a ghost, but Susanna determines that he was poisoned and begins to suspect that the “ghost” and the poisoner are one and the same.
Susanna is something of an expert on poisons, having been inspired by her sister's fatal encounter with some poisonous berries to write a cautionary herbal for housewives. You can find a “facsimile” of the document on Emerson’s website.
Diana Spaulding, a newly widowed journalist, makes her debut in Deadlier Than the Pen, the first of four titles in Emerson’s second series. It is 1888, the height of yellow journalism, and the murder of two female journalists prompts Spaulding to investigate the handsome horror author Damon Bathory. Written against the backdrop of New York City, the novel brings to life the day-to-day realities and hardships of the gilded age.
And, just in case this is not enough to keep Emerson busy, she also writes a contemporary mystery series under the pseudonym Kaitlyn Dunnett featuring Liss MacCrimmon, a young professional Scottish dancer.
Four of the upcoming Murder 203 authors are also up for Agathas. Rosemary Harris’ Pushing up Daisies is on the Best First Novel list, Chris Grabenstein’s The Crossroads is on the Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel list, and both Jane Cleland and Toni Kelner are up for Best Short Story. Congratulations to all!
