SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: BREAKING REDS NEWS! Red Hallie Ephron's THERE WAS AN OLD WOMAN is #14 on the New York Times eBook list! Way to go, Hallie! We're all so, so, so happy for you!
(OK, now back to today's regularly scheduled blogging...)
Happy book birthday to Caroline and Charles Todd! Their newest novel, under the pen name Charles Todd, is A FINE SUMMER'S DAY. This novel is the latest in the acclaimed New York Times-bestselling Ian Rutledge series, about a brilliant but troubled Scotland Yard detective suffering from what we would now call PTSD after World War I. It's one of Hilary Clinton's favorite series and had a wonderful write-up in yesterday's New York Times Book Review.
A FINE SUMMER'S DAY is the seventeenth book in the Inspector Ian Rutledge series, and this one comes with a twist — it's a prequel, meaning we meet a young Rutledge before the war. Before he — and Britain — were changed forever.
And now, I am honored and delighted to introduce — Caroline and Charles Todd!
1. How did you come up with your character Ian Rutledge?
Caroline: I don’t really know. We wanted several things—to set A
TEST OF WILLS in England because the Great War killed a generation of her young
men, and we felt it would be interesting to see how a survivor of that war
would return to civilian life—and to deal with murders committed by ordinary
people, not gangsters or drug dealers or terrorists. The WHY rather than the
how. And so we needed a man capable of
understanding people. Somehow we simply lucked out. I think I’ve been half in
love with Rutledge ever since.
Charles: Like the Bess
Crawford series, we needed a character of his times, one who could act on his
own. Much as we enjoy CSI, we didn’t want Forensics to solve the crime for our
Inspector. Looking back to that first glimmer of Rutledge, he seemed to set the
stage himself, rather than being “created” by us. And I think that’s been his strength, just as
it is Bess Crawford’s strength.
2. Why did you decide to set the new mystery, A Fine Summer's Day,
in 1914?
Caroline: After sixteen Rutledge
mysteries, where we’d been examining him after the war, we were curious to see
what sort of man he was before the trenches changed him forever. We weren’t
sure we could carry it off, and yet, from the very first page, we realized that
we must have known these things about him, however subconsciously. We couldn’t
have done him justice in A TEST OF WILLS and the subsequent books if we hadn’t
understood the bedrock of his mind and personality before the Battle of the
Somme in 1916. It was an amazing journey of discovery on our parts.
Charles: As fans of the mystery ourselves, we’d come to admire so
many characters created by other authors.
From Poirot to Dalgliesh, from Duncan Kincaid to Gamache, even Joe
Leaphorn and Reacher and Stanley. It never occurred to us starting out with
Rutledge that we might be creating another well known character. But he’s his
own man, and we discovered while writing A FINE SUMMER’S DAY that he’s still
full of surprises.
3. What kind of research do you do for your novels?
Charles and Caroline: You can’t write a good mystery without
equally thorough research. In our case, with both series, we realized early on
that we had to go to England if we wanted to get the time and the language and
the settings right. We also look for
first hand sources of information about the period and the war. A friend found
a little book by Florence Nightingale that was an interesting glimpse into what
was known about dealing with war wounds and medicine at the time. Letters and
memoirs and photographs are very important. But you have to be careful using a
book written after 1920, you have to check that modern research hasn’t turned
up information that a character living at the time couldn’t or wouldn’t have
known. And England has lovely military museums. These and the ones here are an
endless resource.
4. Do you generally know how your books will end before you start
writing, or do you make changes as you go along?
Caroline: We have no idea
from page one forward who did it or why. We let the story evolve and the
characters tell us what we need to know. And I think that’s a good thing,
because it keeps the reader guessing too. We never outline, or write a
proposal, because we prefer to be surprised as we work. Other writers thrive on
outlines. That always amazes me because I was never good at them. Anyone who is
has my respect.
Charles: My father, who was
our proofreader for many years, always worried about the ending because when we
handed him a chapter, he knew that the next one hadn’t been written yet, and
having the logical mind of a chemical engineer, he was afraid we might find
ourselves going astray before he could find out who did it and why. Somehow we
never did, and he’d laugh and say, “I don’t know how you managed it this time.”
And sometimes we weren’t sure how we did, either.
5. What are you working on now?
Caroline and Charles: In
December we turned in the next Bess Crawford. It will be out in late summer,
and the title is A PATTERN OF LIES. It’s
a mystery about our version of an actual event, and how a pattern of lies can
warp and twist the truth until people start to believe them. We always love
writing a Bess mystery. She’s one of our
favorite people, and she’s fun as well as interesting. Her decision to become a
nursing sister, her background in India, and her relationships with her flat
mates, her parents, and of course Simon Brandon and even Sergeant Lassiter, and
not least, her experiences in the war, give her so many dimensions that we
never lack ideas for her series. Now, with that one finished and in production,
we’re about to start the next Rutledge for the winter of 2016. Starting a new manuscript is always so
exciting.
6. Anything else we should know?
Caroline: There’s a
character in A FINE SUMMER’S DAY who just might walk back into this new
Rutledge. You can almost hear her asking
to reappear six years later… The
question is, what will Rutledge have to say about that?
Charles: We weren’t sure
how reviewers would take this return to the Summer of 1914, but they got it
right away, and I think Rutledge fans are going to find it very satisfying.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS: Charles and Caroline Todd are a mother-and-son writing team who live on the east coast of the United States. Caroline has a BA in English Literature and History, and a Masters in International Relations. Charles has a BA in Communication Studies with an emphasis on Business Management, and a culinary arts degree that means he can boil more than water. Caroline has been married (to the same man) for umpteen years, and Charles is divorced.
Charles and Caroline have a rich storytelling heritage. Both spent many evenings on the porch listening to their fathers and grandfathers reminisce. And a maternal grandmother told marvelous ghost stories. This tradition allows them to write with passion about events before their own time. And an uncle/great-uncle who served as a flyer in WWI aroused an early interest in the Great War.
Charles learned the rich history of Britain, including the legends of King Arthur, William Wallace, and other heroes, as a child. Books on Nelson and by Winston Churchill were always at hand. Their many trips to England gave them the opportunity to spend time in villages and the countryside, where there’a different viewpoint from that of the large cities. Their travels are at the heart of the series they began ten years ago.
Charles’s love of history led him to a study of some of the wars that shape it: the American Civil War, WWI and WWII. He enjoys all things nautical, has an international collection of seashells, and has sailed most of his life. Golf is still a hobby that can be both friend and foe. And sports in general are enthusiasms. Charles had a career as a business consultant. This experience gave him an understanding of going to troubled places where no one was glad to see him arrive. This was excellent training for Rutledge’s reception as he tries to find a killer in spite of local resistance.
Caroline has always been a great reader and enjoyed reading aloud, especially poetry that told a story. The Highwayman was one of her early favorites. Her wars are WWI, the Boer War, and the English Civil War, with a sneaking appreciation of the Wars of the Roses as well. When she’s not writing, she’s traveling the world, gardening, or painting in oils. Her background in international affairs backs up her interest in world events, and she’s also a sports fan, an enthusiastic follower of her favorite teams in baseball and pro football. She loves the sea, but is a poor sailor. (Charles inherited his iron stomach from his father.) Still, she has never met a beach she didn’t like.
Both Caroline and Charles share a love of animals, and family pets have always been rescues. There was once a lizard named Schnickelfritz. Don’t ask.
Writing together is a challenge, and both enjoy giving the other a hard time. The famous quote is that in revenge, Charles crashes Caroline’s computer, and Caroline crashes his parties. Will they survive to write more novels together? Stay tuned! Their father/husband is holding the bets.
