Marcia Talley--Daughter of Ashes

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This has been a great week on JRW for me. So many good books! And to top it off, my friend and colleague, Marcia Talley, has a new Hannah Ives mystery out this month. 

I’ve just read it and liked it so much that I invited her to Jungle Red to talk about it.  Marcia’s books usually keep Hannah sleuthing in and around Annapolis Maryland (where Marcia also lives), but Daughter of Ashes is set in a bucolic seaside community on the eastern shore of Maryland.  The book opens with Hannah and her husband buying a vacation cottage, a real fixer-upper.  During the course of renovations, they make a horrific discovery – I hope I’m not giving anything away here -- the mummified body of an infant hidden in the chimney. Here's Marcia to tell us more:

MARCIA TALLEY:  Don’t worry about spoilers, Debs.  My publisher gave that fact away on the jacket flap, and so did the reviewer for Publishers Weekly.   But, yes, that’s the event that sets the whole plot in motion.  The idea for this book had been simmering on the back burner of my brain for some time, actually.  Do you remember ages ago,  back in 1995, I believe, you and I attended a workshop at St Hilda’s College in Oxford, UK called Making Crime Pay?  The workshop was taught by Kate Charles and Susan Moody.  In one exercise, we were given two index cards, each with a snippet of a news story on it -- like those fillers you see at the bottom of a newspaper column – and we had to combine them into a single story. I drew one  about a baby found in a chimney and another about a young motorcyclist getting run off the road. I had to figure out the connection between those two events.

DEBS: And you do so brilliantly here, Marcia. But has it really been twenty years??? How is that possible??

MT:  Yes, and thank you.  You wrote a mystery about a baby’s body being found in a wall, too, didn’t you, Debs?  When we passed those index cards around, did you get the article about the baby, too?

DEBS:  That was Water Like a Stone, the 10th (I had to count) Kincaid/James novel, set around narrowboats and the Shropshire Union Canal in Cheshire. I didn't get the article about the baby at that workshop. Years later, I saw a little sidebar in the Dallas Morning News about a couple who were renovating a house in west Texas and found the mummified body of an infant about a year old in the wall. Obviously great minds think alike... So how did you get from 1995 to 2015?

MT:  Twenty years went by, and then a couple of other things happened that resurrected that baby in  the chimney. To begin with, my husband and I bought a cottage in the Bahamas.  We’d made an offer on another cottage but the deal fell through because of some barely legal real estate shenanigans.  So – at least as far as I was concerned -- a real estate agent had to die.  I was chewing on how best to accomplish that while attending a writers’ retreat in Charlotte, NC, sponsored by Sisters in Crime.  One of the other attendees was author Sarah Shaber who told me about an ongoing scandal in Franklin County, NC, involving the discovery and destruction of historic records dating back to the 1840s.  My heroine, Hannah Ives, is a former records manager so it seemed obvious to me that she’d want to get involved in helping prevent a tragedy like that.  What was in those records, she’d wonder – just like the folks in Franklin County – that somebody with either money or influence or both didn’t want made public.

And then, there’s always my addiction to those makeover shows on HGTV like The Property Brothers.  I had such fun writing scenes like one, when I needed to call Hannah back to the house:

“You’re needed at the cottage,” my husband said.  “Rusty’s got the tile laid in the bathroom, but it seems we have a decision to make about the grout.”

“What’s to decide?” I asked.  “Grout is grout.”

“You might think so, my dear, but I’m holding a color chart in my hands right now.  There’s white, of course, but we’ve also got pure white, antique white, linen white …”

“Darling,” I interrupted, “White is white.  Pick one.”

“Then there’s canvas, cinnamon, and silver,” Paul continued as if I hadn’t spoken.  “Mauve, rose, wheat, cocoa, cayenne, smoke, cadet blue and something called Navajo.”

“Navajo?  What kind of a color is Navajo?”

“Kind of a warm beige.  But you can see why I need you here.”

“Paul …” I began, thinking about the mountains of refuse we still had to dispose of in the courthouse basement.

“I’m leaning toward evergreen myself, maybe black,” he continued.

I had to laugh.  “I’m sure.  But you’re right, we’re going to have to live with the grout for a long time.  Tell Rusty I’ll be home in about twenty minutes.”

DEBS:  (I LOVE The Property Brothers. I can't let myself watch it or I won't do anything else as long as there's a new episode coming on.) So, Rusty is the guy on the motorcycle.

MT:  Exactly.  The contractor’s son who actually discovers the baby’s body.  What was it about the discovery that put his life in danger?  Not surprisingly, dark secrets from Maryland’s past ooze out.

DEBS: PW gave the book a great review, calling it a “tale of love, greed, racism, politics, and power.”

MT:  They did, and the former librarian in me had to laugh when the reviewer added, “Fascinating information on how to search historical records is a bonus.” 

DEBS: Well, I loved the book. I think it’s one of your best, and that's saying a lot.  And I’ve been

meaning to ask where did the title come from?

MT: It’s from a poem by Carl Sandburg about the aftermath of war.

… Oh daughter of ashes and mother of blood, 


Child of the hair let down, and tears, 


Child of the cross in the south 


And the star in the north …

Out of the storm let us have one star.

DEBS: Oooh, that's lovely. Gives me goosebumps. And I see how beautifully that relates to the plot.

MT:  Shhhh … no spoilers!

DEBS:  My lips are sealed.

Readers will have to find out for themselves. Marcia will be dropping in today to chat  AND WILL GIVE A BOOK TO A LUCKY COMMENTER so please stop by and say "hi."  And I'm hoping she'll tell us if that cottage in the photo is actually in Maryland.

Because I might have to move to Maryland if it is...

REDS ALERT! Katie Baer is the winner of Charles Todd's A PATTERN OF LIES! Katie, email me at deborahcrombie.com with your email address and we'll get a book on the way to  you! 

And be sure to come back tomorrow when I'll be filling  you in on the Laz-Y-Jet Spa!

Marcia Talley--St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend

DEBORAH CROMBIE: St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend is the hidden gem of mystery conferences. If Marcia Talley weren't my friend, I'd be very tempted to commit some heinous crime born of jealousy, because she got to attend this year, and I, having been in England in May, couldn't manage another trip as soon as August. To make it up to me, Marcia is going to give us some highlights along with photos from this year and previous conferences.

(I am so cross. I found a fabulous photo the other day when was straightening my office. St. Hilda's, 1996, with Kate Charles and Marcia Talley being punted on the Cherwell by Laurie King. I meant to put it in this post but now can't find it. Apologies!!! But Marcia has plenty to share.)

MARCIA TALLEY: In the late summer of 1994, a new mystery conference made its quiet debut at St Hilda's College in Oxford, England. The brainchild of mystery author Kate Charles and the college's alumni officer, Eileen Roberts, the St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Weekend has for over twenty years, drawn mystery lovers from all over the world to the tranquil banks of the River Cherwell.

The inaugural conference, “Queens of Crime,” focused on women mystery authors with Oxford connections, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie, an entirely appropriate topic for St. Hilda's which was, until recently, the only remaining all women's college in England. Indeed, Val McDermid is an “old girl” of the college and Margaret York was its librarian and a speaker at first conference. At the end of that first weekend, response was so overwhelming that Charles and Roberts decided to continue the conference the following year with “The Golden Age, Then and Now.” Topics in subsequent years have included “Murder in Academia,” “Men and Women in Blue,” “Partners in Crime,” “ Scene of the Crime,” and “Mind Games, Psychology, Crime and Mystery,” to name but a few.  This year, as England commemorates the centennial of the beginning of World War I, St Hilda’s remembered, too, with “Crimes of the Past: War and Other Evils.”

It is this themed approach which sets St. Hilda's apart from other mystery conferences. There's none of the usual panels of writers sitting around making thinly disguised sales pitches for their books. Speakers come by invitation only and deliver thought-provoking papers on aspects of the mystery genre relevant to the topic that year. It is the skilled moderator/chair (Edward Marsden, Andrew Taylor, the late Robert Barnard and Natasha Cooper have been tapped for this several times) who ties the papers together and ably guides the question and answer session.

Papers are delivered in the acoustically perfect surroundings of the Jacqueline duPre Music Building, and there's no overlap between sessions so no one has to miss anything. It's this aspect of learning, I think, that keeps bringing people back to St. Hilda's: We hear Julia Wallace Martin talk about the relationship between manic depression and the creative process; Val McDermid's historical overview of gays and lesbians in crime fiction; or Alan Bradley’s poignant tale about the day his father ran away from home – for good. And who could resist a talk entitled “Lord Roberts Has a Full Crate of Whisky: Stories of the Anglo-Boer War” with which Frances Brody closed out this year’s session.

It's a tribute to the quality of the conference that authors who have attended St. Hilda's as participants continue to do so even if they haven't been invited to give a paper.

The conference opens Friday night with a champagne party on the college lawn which slopes gently down to the river. Just beyond are the playing fields of Magdalen College and beyond that, the towering spires of Oxford. Andrew Taylor marvels that there is no distinction between authors and non-authors at St. Hilda’s, none of the 'them and us' quality that distinguishes many conferences—fans on one side, and performing authors on the other. Perhaps because of its size—roughly 125 attendees —newcomers are made to feel welcome and find it a good place for conversation. Nowhere is this more evident than on Saturday night when attendees gather after dinner for a wine party in the Senior Common Room. Some have been known to stay up until the wee hours, chatting away about crime fiction or anything else that strikes their fancy.

Programs are punctuated by breaks for tea, coffee and cookies, and a civilized sherry hour invariably precedes the Saturday night dinner which has featured speakers like P.D. James, Colin Dexter, and Val McDermid. I'm still laughing over the evening Simon Brett performed all twelve roles for the world premier of Lines of Enquiry, a radio play “starring Osbert Mint, Betti Morns and Bren O'Smitt.” (You work it out!) I should mention that the food is excellent, served in the elegant, wood-paneled dining room and, as a vegetarian, I appreciate the tasty vegetarian options.

Everyone lodges at the college in clean comfortable rooms where “scouts” make up your bed each morning and electric kettles and the wherewithal for making tea sit on your desk.

The return rate is high. Anne Perry said it best: “The atmosphere is civilized, physically beautiful … a gathering of old friends to discuss the things we are all interested in. It is effortlessly 'academic', one leaves feeling entertained, enriched, educated, and renewed to begin again on the art and the career we all love.”

DEBS: Here are some of Marcia's photos, captioned as best I can (while I take a break to dig through more boxes looking for my own...)

The beautiful view of the River Cherwell from the college lawns.

Marcia, Alan Bradley, and Kate Charles, 2014

Kate Charles presides over dinner at the college high table, 2011

PD James chats with an attendee as a former college principle looks on, 2011

Kate Charles and Keith Miles, 2011

Val McDermid and Ayo Onatade share a joke, 2011

 Sigh. As you can see, the weather, the setting, the company, and the crime are divine. I'm setting my sights on next year.

One more snippet--Marcia has failed to mention that she has a brand new Hannah Ives novel, TOMORROW'S VENGANCE, so I'm going to do it for her.  I got to read it early, when I was in London, and it's wonderful.

Hannah Ives is introduced to Calvert Colony, a continuing care retirement community in Maryland, by her friend, Naddie Gray, and soon meets a colourful cast of characters: Colonel Greene, the spritely war veteran, Safa Abaza, an over-zealous religious convert, Ysabelle Milanesi, who fled the Nazis when she was a girl, handsome chef Raniero and his sister, Filomena.

When Hannah signs on as a volunteer in the Memory Unit, she becomes more even more involved in the lives of the Calvert Colony residents. But events take a dark turn when one of them is found murdered. Hannah is drawn into the investigation, and soon finds herself uncovering old crimes and reigniting quarrels that know no boundaries of place or time.

Publisher's Weekly says, "Talley deals sensitively with such aging issues as consensual sex among residents, vulnerability to scam artists, declining cognitive abilities, autocratic relatives, and the importance of touch and music in providing comfort."

Reading a Hannah novel is, as always, like spending time with one of your best friends, and getting a cracking good mystery to boot.

So who's up for Oxford and St. Hilda's next year?  I'm sure Marcia will be there.