Allison Montclair--Murder at the White Palace

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Such a treat today to have Allison Gordon, whose Sparks and Bainbridge series is one of my absolute favorites of the last few years! In the novels, Iris Sparks, a former intelligence operative, and Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a widow with a six-year-old son, open a marriage bureau in 1946 London, and it turns out that they have a talent for solving crimes as well as making matches. Allison, who you may know from previous posts is actually the always entertaining Alan Gordon, is here to tell us what they are up to in their latest adventure, MURDER AT THE WHITE PALACE.

"When The Underlying Story Meets The Standalone"

Allison Montclair 

 

  When I began writing the Sparks and Bainbridge series, I had the benefit of learning from writing another historical series, my Fools' Guild mysteries. I now had a veteran writer's perspective on creating backstories and needs for the characters to drive the books beyond the immediate needs of the body on their doorstep.

  So I made sure that I had enough to complicate the lives of Gwen Bainbridge and Iris Sparks to hopefully make the reader care about their lives. I was interested in writing about the traumatic impact of WWII on two British women in different economic and social situations. Gwen, the daughter of the aristocracy whose perfect marriage and life were shattered with the death of her husband, leading to her suicide attempt and commitment to a sanatarium and Iris, whose intellect and abilities propelled her from Cambridge into British Intelligence operations, where she was forced to do things that destroyed much of her life and her sense of self.

  The Right Sort Marriage Bureau, the setting for the series, was meant to reflect the healing process that was needed, both by the two women, but also symbolizing the recovery of London after the war.

  And I may have done too good a job, because once they were living full time inside my head, I needed to know what was going to happen with their lives as much as anyone.  But this is a mystery series, which meant that in order for me to write the underlying stories and progress for the two, I would have to keep having them jump into murder investigations. So the bodies started piling up. The first book starts in June, 1946, and it's been virtually Murder By The Month ever since.

  I like to call this Jessica Fletcher Syndrome, where you have to keep inventing plausible scenarios for your protagonist to be investigating. Yet I am trying to avoid repetition and cliches. It ain't easy. I learned this lesson early as a kid watching "Mannix," and realizing that reunions of old school chums is a situation fraught with danger.

  With the latest book, MURDER AT THE WHITE PALACE, I am tying up some storylines set up from the beginning. Gwen is finally free of the restrictions of the Court of Lunacy and her controlling in-laws, while Iris is ready to move forward with her relationship with her gangster boyfriend, Archie, planning on finally introducing him to her MP mother while going public with him at his nephew's wedding. The Right Sort is organizing a New Year's dance for their unmatched clients, and Archie has a night club undergoing renovation that may do the trick.

In the immediate post-war days of London, two unlikely partners have undertaken an even more unlikely, if necessary, business venture—The Right Sort Marriage Bureau. The two partners are Miss Iris Sparks, a woman with a dangerous—and never discussed—past in British intelligence and Mrs. Gwendolyn Bainbridge, a genteel war widow with a young son entangled in a complicated aristocratic family. Looking to throw a New Year’s Eve soiree for their clients, Sparks and Bainbridge scout an empty building—only to find a body contained in the walls. What they initially assume is a victim of the recent Blitz is uncovered instead to be a murder victim—stabbed several times.

To make matters worse, the owner of the building is Sparks’ beau, Archie Spelling, who has ties to a variety of enterprises on the right and wrong sides of the law, and the main investigator for the police is her ex-fiancée. Gwen, too, is dealing with her own complicated love life, as she tentatively steps back into the dating pool for the first time since her husband’s death. Murder is not something they want to add to their plates, but the murderer may be closer to home than is comfortable, and they must do all they can to protect their clients, their business and themselves. 

Allison Montclair is the pseudonym of Alan Gordon. As Allison, she writes the Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries, beginning with THE RIGHT SORT OF MAN (The ALA Reading List Council’s Best Mystery of 2019). Set in 1946 London, the books detail the adventures and struggles of two women trying to run a licensed marriage bureau. The fifth book, THE LADY FROM BURMA, was released this past July. 

DEBS: Readers, does the Jessica Fletcher syndrome worry you when you read novels with amateur detectives?

Are You Ready for the Olympics?

DEBORAH CROMBIE:  How is it time for the Olympics again? 

Even though the Olympics switched to alternating the Winter and Summer Games in 1994 with the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway (although the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France were held only two years before Lillehammer) I had too many years of expecting the Olympics to roll around every four years, and my brain still hasn't managed to reset itself. (Moving the 2020 Summer Games to 2021 didn't help!) I do like the two-year system, however. Winter and Summer Games in the same year were a bit of an overload--two years seems just long enough to get excited again. 

But, yes, it is time for the (testing your Roman numeral skills here) XXXIII Olympic Games, and in Paris to boot!

 

Although I live in a non-sports-watching household (I have to force my husband to watch the Superbowl) I love watching the Olympics. Favorite sports are (of course) gymnastics, rowing, equestrian, track, swimming, and diving, but I find I will watch just about anything once I am into the Olympic groove. (Rugby yesterday, although I really have no idea what's going on.) (Oops, maybe I shouldn't admit my ignorance since I write British novels...)

This will be the 3rd time in the history of the Games that Paris has hosted the Olympics.

But I suspect things are considerably more complicated now than they were in 1900 or 1924. The logistics of these games are amazing! Did you know there are over 10,000 athletes?? There will be 329 events across 39 sports. (Breakdancing, anyone? I'm up for it!)

There is a 3,500 seat restuarant. How will that even work? Where did they put all the visitors?

And, of course, there are the Opening Ceremonies, which will for the first time in the history of Games be held outside of a stadium. Instead, the Parade of Nations will take place on the River Seine. (Not talking about sewage, not talking about sewage...If the mayor can swim in it...)

Tomorrow night I'll be settled in front of the big screen TV with my popcorn, ready for the spectacle. How about you?

Bonus question: Who has been to the Games? I'd love to have made the 2012 Olympics in London, but couldn't swing it. But here are the 23 rowers from Leander Club chosen as part of this year's team GB rowing contingent. (Sorry, team USA, but you know who I'm rooting for on this one.)

Bonus question 2: Pay attention to the uniforms. Julia will have a pop quiz for you next week!

Bonus question 3: Favorite Olympic moment? Mine might have to be the from the 2012 Opening Ceremonies in London (although it makes me a little teary now.)

Marcy McCreary--The Summer of Love and Death

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Woodstock. One word. That's all most of us have to hear to immediately envision one of the defining cultural events of a generation. I was too young to go to Woodstock, but old enough to think it was all incredibly cool and romantic. How I would have loved to have had a bird's eye view of the festival.

Author Marcy McCreary has given us better than that, however, in her new novel THE SUMMER OF LOVE AND DEATH, a dual timeline story set in 1969 and in 2019. Here's Marcy to explain!

MARCY McCREARY: On Friday August 15, 1969, my mom took me and my twin sister to the (now-defunct) Catskills Game Farm. If you know anything about that location and that date, you’ll pretty much guess what happened next. Yup, we got stranded on the road along with hundreds of thousands of hippies on their way to the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. I was six years old at the time and being stuck in that traffic jam pretty much sums up my personal experience with Woodstock.

But that memory stuck with me, and even inspired scenes in my latest novel, The Summer of Love and Death. But my stuck-in-traffic experience was not going to cut it for truly understanding what went down during those three days of peace and love. And so my research journey began.

As you can well imagine, there is plenty of information about the Woodstock festival on the Internet (the bands, the crowds, the ticketing fiasco), but there is next to nothing about how security was handled and the role of law enforcement at Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York, where the festival took place. What was there felt incomplete, and I suspected, not 100% accurate. To authentically render the novel’s flashback scenes, what I really needed was a firsthand account of policing at Woodstock and the surrounding area.

For my earlier novels, I had no trouble finding and interviewing detectives, lawyers, doctors, and forensics specialists who could answer my questions or provide background on a particular subject matter. What were the chances of tracking down one of the three hundred NYPD police officers who worked at the festival? Felt like I was in slim-to-none territory.

And then luck stepped in.

In the fall of 2022, while at a writer’s conference, I chatted up fellow writer Gregory Renz about my manuscript and he thought he might know someone who could provide some insight. A few weeks later, Greg put me in touch with Nick Chiarkas, an ex-NYPD cop (and crime writer!) who was one of the 300 “Peace Force” cops at Woodstock. 

Nick and I talked for hours about the security apparatus and his personal experiences at the event. In addition to describing how law enforcement handled the crowds, kept the peace, assisted in medical emergencies, Nick regaled me with personal anecdotes that I have woven into the story (with his blessing). Meeting Nick felt fateful, and I’m grateful for his contribution to the novel.

The Summer of Love and Death is a dual timeline murder mystery—2019 and 1969—set in the Catskills featuring a father-daughter detective team. Detective Susan Ford is investigating a murder that is eerily similar to her dad’s first case as a detective. Detective Will Ford’s chapters are set in 1969, with the historical events of that year unfolding around him—the Apollo moon landing, the Miracle Mets, the Vietnam War protests. It was fun to incorporate these events within the context of his scenes, get his take on them, and see how they influenced his worldview. And although his chapters are dark (he’s investigating a serial murder!), Will’s optimism and idealism mirror the sentiment of that era’s generation.

If you could go back in time and attend Woodstock, would you? Which band(s) would you want to see? Would you skinny dip?

DEBS: Oh, oh, can I just cheat here?? I love Marcy's questions! 

Even as a romantic teenager, I was a little creeped out by the idea of the crowds, so not sure I would want to be magically there. But I would love to experience it vicariously! The bands! I would love to have seen (and did see some in concert):

Hendrix. The Who. Joplin. Jefferson Airplane. Crosby, Stills, and Nash! But you know which one really jumped out at me? Country Joe and the Fish. Who grew up in the late sixties who couldn't sing Joe McDonald's "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die?"

Oh, and skinny dipping. Yeah, sure, if I could look like I did when I was seventeen:-)

Here's a list of the bands for your perusal.

Marcy McCreary is the author of The Disappearance of Trudy Solomon, a Silver Falchion finalist for Best Investigator Mystery and The Murder of Madison Garcia, a Society of Voice Arts and Sciences winner for Best Audiobook—Mystery. The Summer of Love and Death is the third book in her Ford Family Mystery Series, released in August 2024. She graduated from The George Washington University with a B.A. in American literature and political science and pursued a career in marketing and communications. She lives in Hull, MA with her husband Lew. She is an active fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association. 

The Summer of Love and Death

Detective Susan Ford and her new partner, Detective Jack Tomelli, are called to a crime scene at the local summer stock theater where they find the director of Murder on the Orient Express gruesomely murdered—naked, face caked in makeup, pillow at his feet, wrists and ankles bound by rope. When Susan describes the murder to her dad, retired detective Will Ford, he recognizes the MO of a 1969 serial killer . . . a case he worked fifty years ago.

Will remembers a lot of things about that summer—the Woodstock Festival, the Apollo 11 moon landing, the Miracle Mets, the Vietnam War protests—yet he is fuzzy on the details of the decades-old case. But when Susan and Jack discover the old case files, his memories start trickling back. And with each old and new clue, Susan, Jack, and Will must narrow down the pool of suspects before the killer strikes again.