JRW welcomes a guest blog by Kay Kendall
Lots of iconic fictional characters are repurposed and plopped into historical settings unlike those they originally inhabited in novels and plays. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, became dancing and singing New York City teenagers in Westside Story. Sherlock Holmes again inhabits London to catch evil doers, but his cityscape now includes the Millennium Wheel.
An icon of my early years was Nancy Drew. She was nosy as could be, always jumping into her roadster and whirling off to uncover clues. When I was eight, I’d no idea that the original series was set in the 1930s. If I’d realized that, I might have understood why no one in my small hometown in Kansas ever drove “roadsters” anymore. If you consider that Nancy’s first adventures took place even before World War Two, then you realize how daring she was for her times.
Many boomers like me grew up on Nancy Drew mysteries. As the years have passed, I’ve realized how much her ethos has stayed with me. When I transitioned into my second career of mystery author—I call myself a reformed PR executive—it seemed only natural to write about a female amateur sleuth. You may not recognize my protagonist Austin Starr as being related to Nancy Drew, but within Austin the spirit of Nancy carries on.
Once I knew the main character, I had to decide what decade she would live in. Since my favorite mysteries are historical, I began to write what I love. I started working on my debut mystery Desolation Row a year before Mad Men made the sixties unexpectedly hot, after being very, very cold indeed for a long time. But that time period fascinates me. After all, I grew up with the Cold War and Vietnam as my backdrops. There was no shortage of drama and violence. I wanted to make that era come alive again, but to treat it like history. And even though I can remember that decade, that doesn’t make it any less historical.
Lots of iconic fictional characters are repurposed and plopped into historical settings unlike those they originally inhabited in novels and plays. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, became dancing and singing New York City teenagers in Westside Story. Sherlock Holmes again inhabits London to catch evil doers, but his cityscape now includes the Millennium Wheel. An icon of my early years was Nancy Drew. She was nosy as could be, always jumping into her roadster and whirling off to uncover clues. When I was eight, I’d no idea that the original series was set in the 1930s. If I’d realized that, I might have understood why no one in my small hometown in Kansas ever drove “roadsters” anymore. If you consider that Nancy’s first adventures took place even before World War Two, then you realize how daring she was for her times.
Many boomers like me grew up on Nancy Drew mysteries. As the years have passed, I’ve realized how much her ethos has stayed with me. When I transitioned into my second career of mystery author—I call myself a reformed PR executive—it seemed only natural to write about a female amateur sleuth. You may not recognize my protagonist Austin Starr as being related to Nancy Drew, but within Austin the spirit of Nancy carries on.
Once I knew the main character, I had to decide what decade she would live in. Since my favorite mysteries are historical, I began to write what I love. I started working on my debut mystery Desolation Row a year before Mad Men made the sixties unexpectedly hot, after being very, very cold indeed for a long time. But that time period fascinates me. After all, I grew up with the Cold War and Vietnam as my backdrops. There was no shortage of drama and violence. I wanted to make that era come alive again, but to treat it like history. And even though I can remember that decade, that doesn’t make it any less historical.
In her first outing, Desolation Row, Austin Starr must prove her new husband did not kill the son of a United States senator. She is in a foreign land, having moved to Canada in 1968 with her draft-resisting husband. Scared and alone, she has to conquer her fears. But she does plow on, and in her second escapade, Rainy Day Women, she discovers she has a real yen for solving murder cases. Besides the fun of including hippies, beads, macramé purses and Bob Dylan tunes, the virtue of the sixties time period is that crime solving did not involve CSI techniques. As a writer I am more interested in character and motivation than in fingerprints and DNA. Austin’s extreme inquisitiveness leads to anomalies that she can figure out through logic and a fine understanding of human nature. That world she inhabits is familiar but at the same time quite gone. Austin is forever searching for a payphone and if she misses a call at home, she doesn’t even know she has missed it. In the late 1960s, answering machines existed but were hardly ubiquitous.
I like delving into that world. And staying there for a long time. I like showing how issues that reared their heads then are still current today. My first mystery takes place during an unpopular war, and Austin develops a viewpoint that is anti-war but pro-soldier. My new book introduces Austin to the women’s liberation movement. Slowly but surely, she learns about what has become known as second-wave feminism. This is a subject I’ve longed to write about for years. Sadly, I just never realized the goal of female equality would remain as relevant as it still is today.
Kay Kendall is a long-time fan of historical novels and now writes atmospheric mysteries that capture the spirit and turbulence of the 60s. A reformed PR executive who won international awards for her projects, Kay lives in Texas with her Canadian husband, three house rabbits, and spaniel Wills. Terribly allergic to her bunnies, she loves them anyway! Her book titles show she's a Bob Dylan buff too. New York Times bestselling author Miranda James says, “Austin Starr is back, and that’s great news for mystery fans. Suspenseful and entertaining, this is a worthy follow-up to Kendall’s excellent debut, Desolation Row.”
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