Thursday, December 26, 2024

MISSING: ONE STORYLINE.

RHYS BOWEN:  I really enjoyed Lyn Squire's first book with a mystery about Charles Dickens. Now he moves to another prominent Victorian and a mystery surrounding Charles Darwin.  But this story did not just fall into his lap, as he explains here. Welcome Lyn:

  LYN SQUIRE:


Having proudly sent my first book off to the publisher, I was itching to get started on the next.  My protagonist, Dunston Burnett, a diffident, middle-aged, retired bookkeeper, was raring to go.  And my theme for the three-book series – the tension between Dunston’s limited sleuthing skills and the complexity of the crimes he encounters – was firmly established.  All that was missing was… the storyline.  

             I had apparently used up my inventive quota on my first book, so what was I to do?  Draw on events in your own life, you might say.  Good suggestion.  But sadly, my twenty-five years traveling the globe as a World Bank economist did not bring me into contact with a single crime scene or murder investigation, nothing to set the little grey cells churning.

             What else could I do?  Learn from the greats, you suggest.  Yes, should have thought of that.  Arthur Conon Doyle!  All those ingenious Sherlock Holmes’s stories.  He’s my man.  And there, in his autobiography, I found his advice to would-be mystery writers: The first thing is…  Aha!  Here it is… get your idea.   Yes, but how? 

Would reading everything I could about prominent figures and major events in Victorian England, the setting for my series, help?  Many books later, I was an expert on the Corn Laws, Ragged Schools, the First Boer War, and other hot topics of the nineteenth century, but otherwise still idea-free, not a spark of inspiration, nothing.




Nothing, that is, until I read a biography of Charles Darwin.  Charles Darwin?  What, you ask, can England’s foremost scientist of his day possibly have to say about murder?  As those of you who have read The Origin of Species know, the words murder, crime, victim are nowhere to be found in the book’s seven hundred pages of facts and figures.  So what help could he provide? 

A lot, as it happens.  Did you know that Darwin was bombarded with scathing reviews, blistering editorials, and crude cartoons from believers in God’s creation of man?  Could this avalanche of rage and disgust have escalated into something more malicious?   Mmm, sounds promising.  And did you know that Darwin and his wife were first cousins?  And that in the nineteenth century, offspring of such marriages were thought to suffer infertility?  Was there an idea here?  A couple denied the joy of grandchildren by some cruel tragedy?  Yes!  I finally had the pegs on which to hang my second story. 

Fatally Inferior recounts the consequences of two events: the abduction of a member of Darwin’s family, followed a few days later by a ransom demand – renounce your blasphemous theory in The Times or the hostage dies; and the death, or so it seems, of a former maid birthing a son in a London workhouse.  Apparently unrelated incidents, you might think, yet they converge in a vile act of vengeance: a hellish torture for the victim; the perfect revenge for the perpetrator.

Charles Darwin makes only a few fleeting appearances in Fatally Inferior, but without him, the second book in The Dunston Burnett Trilogy would never have… evolved, as the great man might say.

RHYS: Any suggestions for a juicy Victorian murder for Lyn's third book?


16 comments:

  1. Congratulations on your first book, Lyn, and on finding the storyline for your second . . . I'm looking forward to reading both.

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  2. Isn't it fun where ideas come from? Congratulations on letting Darwin inspire you, and the story sounds fabulous. I'll bet there's a well-know woman in your era who is itching to have a mystery centered on her!

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  3. I must read your first book, Lyn--I'm a Dickens fan--and this second book sounds fascinating. An idea for #3? How about an anti-Semitic attack on Benjamin Disraeli? He became an Anglican as a child, but he was born Jewish, so that might have inspired some dangerous prejudice.

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  4. Congratulations! How bout something around the building of the Crystal Palace? The Commission rejected all the initial designs, including a couple by famous architects. The eventual designer, Joseph Paxton, was a gardener and garden designer. Crystal Palace would give lots of room for murder, and an amazing backdrop.

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  5. Welcome Lyn, and congrats on wrangling the new idea. I also find that the idea is one thing, but what happens for 250 pages is quite another!

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  6. Congratulations! Yes, I saw agree, the “looking for the idea“ stage is the worst. Totally the worst. And yes, as Lucy says, then you have to actually write the book about it. It sounds like you have struck gold! And so many Reddies have good ideas for you on this page today… Love that!

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  7. Might I suggest John Sholto Douglas, Ninth Marquess of Queensbury, who lent his name to the Queensbury rules of boxing and was the father of Oscar Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas; it was the Marquess's actions that brought about the downfall of Wilde. Surely there is fodder for murder somewhere in that story.

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  8. I saw a preview of your 2nd book, Lyn--looking forward to connecting the dots with the poor maid and Darwin's household! (Flora)

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  9. I went to your website and both Immortalized to Death and Fatally Inferior sound fascinating: Congratulations for both. I see, too, that you DO have a concept for your third - seances. What rich possibilities there! I can tell this is going to be a trilogy I want. I truly hope you won't stop with Book Three.

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  10. Congratulations on your Dunston mystery novel, Lyn and welcome to Jungle Reds! I look forward to reading your debut novel.

    While I noticed the objections to Darwin had to do with the idea of being descended from apes?, I wonder if anyone objected to the idea of "survival of the fittest"?

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  11. This book sounds provocative to me! I worked with the anthropologist who discovered "Lucy" and had to read Darwin, whose theory of evolution was as radical then as you said. Even today, with all the hard evidence, there are people who won't accept it and might be angry enough to...!

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    1. Susan, you worked with Don Johanson? Exciting times!

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  12. Darwin! Such a smart idea. Congratulations, Lyn. I might suggest L. Frank Baum...

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  13. Congrats on finding your idea...and in such a unique location.

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  14. Both of your books sound fascinating, Lyn. I did not know that Darwin married his first cousin. That surprises me, as I would think he might have some knowledge of the disadvantages of that. Of course, they could have been madly in love. I'm not sure if the featured famous person has to have lived mostly in the Victorian era, dying shortly after, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859 (died 1930), and if the comment I read from someone above is accurate about your third book dealing with seances, who better than Doyle, who was a "prominent advocate of spiritualism." Also, he was friends with Bram Stoker who was more Victorian, being born in 1847 and died in 1912. Or, maybe Bram Stoker as the featured famous person. The author of Dracula and the book itself would provide much suspenseful atmosphere for murder, and he was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, a group of spiritualists. Then, on the female character focus is Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp.

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