early 20th century – Empowering women through fiction and history.

The Murder That Inspired a TV Cult Classic

Last month, I wrote this blog post about the fascinating unsolved case of Hazel Drew and how it inspired The Case of the Dead Domestic, Book 6 of my Adele Gossling Mysteries.

It turns out my book wasn’t the only creative endeavor inspired by the Hazel Drew case. A more unexpected connection exists between a cult classic TV show that aired in 1990 and this unsolved crime that occurred back in 1908.

Photo credit: Photo of co-creator David Lynch and actor Kyle MacLachlan at the premiere of Season 3 of Twin Peaks, 21 May 2017, Ace Hotel, Los Angeles, CA: Esprus4/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY SA 3.0

I remember the huge success of Twin Peaks back in the early 1990s, though I never saw the series myself. But there was something fascinating about a beautiful blond teenager found floating in a lake in a small town and the psychologically complex story that unfolds for the detective sent to solve her murder. If some of these elements sound familiar, it’s because they are. The Hazel Drew case unfolded in much the same way — with the body of a lovely young woman found dead in a lake near a small town.

Mark Frost, the co-creator of the series, came onto the story of Hazel Drew in a much more organic way than I did. As a boy, he used to spend summers with his grandmother near the Taborton area where Hazel Drew’s murder took place. He heard of Drew not as a murder victim but as a ghost. His grandmother used to entertain him and his younger brother by telling them ghost stories about the ghost of Hazel Drew who still roamed Teal Pond, using it as a cautionary tale for the boys not to go wandering in the isolated area at night.

The story seems to have gone the way that most childhood ghost stories do until the adult Frost was brainstorming ideas for a TV series with David Lynch in an L.A. coffee shop. They suddenly had a vision of a beautiful blond girl found floating face down in a lake. This brought to Frost’s mind the stories he had heard as a child about Hazel Drew and thus, the character of Laura Palmer was born. Frost’s further investigations into the Hazel Drew case led to the plot of the series that was such a hit thirty years ago.

My fascination with the Hazel Drew case came from factors other than Twin Peaks. First, it’s an unsolved crime (in spite of recent theories about who might have killed her) and thus, Hazel Drew’s death hasn’t yet been avenged, which suits my protagonist Adele Gossling perfectly, since her purpose in solving crimes is to make sure women, dead or alive, receive justice. Second, it’s a classic crime that occurred at the turn of the 20th century, which feeds my love for the era. And third, the murder victim was as complex as the murder itself (which I talk more about in my blog post on the case).

Book 6 of the series has just been released, so you can get it here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!

Family and Servant: Domestic Relationships in Upstairs, Downstairs

When I first conceived the idea of the Adele Gossling Mysteries, I wanted to know what life was like in the first years of the early 20th century. I knew my first book, The Carnation Murder, was going to involve an aristocratic family, so I went in search of anything (books, movies, etc) that portrayed life among the aristocracy. I stumbled upon a series that, although it takes place in Britain, mirrors the life wealthy Americans would have lived during this time. I immediately fell in love with it.

Photo Credit: Jean Marsh, who co-created and starred in Upstairs, Downstairs at a signing at the Broadway Theater in Barking, East London, cropped, 12 December 2009, taken by Tim Drury: Rhain/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY SA 2.0

Photo Credit: Dame Eileen Atkins, co-creator of Upstairs, Downstairs, reciting poetry at the British Library, 7 October 2021, The Josephine Hart American Poets Hour: Starkinson/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 3.0

The British TV series Upstairs, Downstairs was the brain-child of two veteran British actresses: Jean Marsh and Dame Eileen Atkins. The two women were dismayed when they watched an earlier British drama The Forsyte Saga (from 1967, not the 2002 mini-series), and realized the series never portrayed the life of the servants who played such a major role in the Forsyte family members’ lives. They wanted to make a comic series set during a time when the class hierarchy was still pronounced in Britain about the troubles and turmoils of those who worked for these aristocratic families – the “downstairs”.

However, when the series was sold, the production company that bought it changed a few things. First, they decided the series should portray not just the downstairs but also the “upstairs,” or, the aristocratic family for which the servants in the series worked (the Bellamys). Second, they decided to take the comedy out of the series and make it more of a drama along the lines of The Forsyte Saga, which had aired four years before the launch of Upstairs, Downstairs in 1971.

One of the fascinating things about this series is that you see how life in the early 20th century (the series ends in 1930) wasn’t easy for either masters and mistresses or servants. Aside from the modern conveniences both had to do without (even though the Bellamys were wealthy so money was no object), the social expectations for both were sometimes difficult to manage.

The pilot episode shows this beautifully, though more from the “downstairs” point of view. Right from the first scene, we see a young woman (played by Pauline Collins) who comes to the house to interview for a position as a maid make the social faux pas of the century — she knocks on the front door. The butler Hudson (Gordon Jackson), his expression one of stoic rage, motions for her to descend the stairs and come through the kitchen entrance and then chews her out for not knocking on the proper door. It’s clear the young woman has never worked in service before, something the other servants, even more than the lady of the house, grumble about. In fact, Lady Marjorie Bellamy (Rachel Gurney) is more sympathetic to the nervous young lady — until it comes to her name. The young lady gives her name as Clemence — a rather “uppity” French name. Lady Marjorie immediately changes it to Sarah and insists she be called by this name. This was actually not uncommon, as mistresses oftentimes either changed the names of their servants or they simply couldn’t be bothered to remember their name so they called them by the name of a former servant they had become used to.

Sarah ends up leaving service quite early in the series (though she does return later on) because, after getting a taste of not only the physical harsh labor but the social and psychological humiliation as well, insists on something better for herself. Members of the family feel the constraints of their social position as well, though in different ways. We see this with the father (whose background is respectable but whose aristocratic standing comes from his wife, and his Parlament peers never let him forget it), the son (whose military position doesn’t always suit his tastes), and the mother and daughter (both of whom suffocate under the constraints of the separate spheres so heavily cherished, especially in Britain, during this time).

Sometimes research can be really fun, and I was lucky enough to catch this series when it was on Netflix in its entirety. It served me well for my upcoming release, The Case of the Dead Domestic, which involves the death of a lady’s maid and the divide between the wealthy of Arrojo and the working class. The book comes out at the end of this month but feel free to pick up a copy now at a special preorder price here.

Early 20th Century Circus Gals: Brave and Tough

March is always a special month for me. For one, it’s my birthday month, and for another, it’s Women’s History Month. As a historical fiction writer whose passion is writing about strong women living in the past, I find that rather fateful.

Since Book 5 of the Adele Gossling Mysteries is coming out next month and the book focuses on murder at the circus, I thought it would be fun to take a look at women circus performers of the 19th and 20th centuries. What I discovered was a handful of women who had more guts than their male counterparts. They were brave and resilient and not ladies you’d want to mess with.

Probably one of the most well-known of these was Lillian Leitzel. She was an aerialist who worked with a rope or brass rings, very similar to what Gina Lollobrigida does in this scene in the 1956 film Trapeze. The aerial rope requires a lot of strength in both the legs and arms and Leitzel would wow the crowds by spinning around so hard she would dislocate her shoulder at nearly every performance. In spite of this, she kept on going, sometimes for a hundred rounds or more. Her act brought in millions and, like many circus stars who knew their worth, she commanded top dollar, including luxuries such as her own tent and her own private railroad car. Like many circus women, she believed in suffragism, advocating for women’s athletics at a time when women were thought to be “too delicate” for physical activity. She was also not a fan of corsets and believed women should have freedom of movement (not surprising, given her circus background). Sadly, Leitzel went the way of many daredevil circus stars. While doing a handstand on a brass ring during a performance in the 1930s, the brass ring broke and she fell on her head from twenty feet in the air, dying of a concussion the next day.

When we think of lions, tigers, and cougars in the circus, we think of the big, manly man as their tamer (there is actually a character like this in Murder Under a Twilight Roof). But there were a small handful of women who tamed cats as well. In 1911, Mabel Stark became the first woman tamer of big cats. One of the thrills of her act was wrestling with one of her lions. She was once asked how she did it and she advised that training cats required a subtle and soft tone of voice and, above all, never showing fear. It obviously worked, as her death was not caused by the mauling of one of her cats. However, it was tragic nonetheless. In the late 1930s, one of her cats escaped and was shot down. She was said to have been very devoted to them and the grief was too much for her so she took her own life.

Photo Credit: Lillian Leitzel (standing on the running board) and May Wirth (sitting behind the wheel), 1924, National Photo Company Collection, Library of Congress: Fae/Wikimedia Commons/PD US no notice

If we’re talking about bravery with animals, how about May Wirth? She was an equestrian who did somersaults and flips from one horse to another while circling the ring. She was one of the Ringling Brothers’ early stars and when she first auditioned by doing a somersault while riding a horse, she fell and landed on her back. But as all circus women, she was resilient and got up, went right back on the horse, and did it again, this time succeeding. Unlike many circus daredevils, Wirth’s life did not end in tragedy. She simply retired, still in one piece, and lived a quiet life until her death in 1937.

My book Murder Under a Twilight Roof features many daring women, including a trapeze flyer, a tightrope walker, and three sisters who handle three mighty big elephants. You can read about them and about murder at the circus in April when the book comes out, but copies are now available at a special preorder price here.

Impulses and Madness: The History of the Insanity Plea

This last month, in honor of the release of my book, A Wordless Death, I wrote a series of newsletters for my newsletter subscribers about the 1914 murder of a New York schoolteacher named Lida Beecher. You can read a little about that case here.

One of the fascinating things about this case is that it brought to the forefront the insanity defense in court cases in the 20th century. The insanity defense is when the defense lawyers claim the defendant was insane at the time he or she committed the crime. The caveat is the defense has to prove the accused had no conception of what he or she was doing when he or she committed the crime and had no concept of the moral or legal consequences of that behavior. To put it simply: They have to prove the defendant didn’t know what he or she was doing at the time of the crime and that what he or she was doing was morally wrong with legal consequences.

The insanity plea has actually been around since the mid-19th century. It was first used in Britain when a man standing trial for attempting to shoot the Prime Minister was acquitted when the jury decided he was psychotic and acting under the belief that the Prime Minister was conspiring against him. The insanity plea was used rarely throughout the years until the Leda Beecher case brought it back. In that case, the plea that Jean Gianini was innocent due to criminal imbecility (based partly on his results on the Binet test which found him to have the mental capacity of a ten-year-old even though he was sixteen) was accepted by the jury and Gianini was saved from the electric chair. Not that his fate was much better, as he was confined to a mental institution until his death in the 1980s.

Photo Credit: Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where Jean Gianini spent most of his days after his trial, ariel view, 1926, War Department, Army Air Forces, National Archives at College Park: Ooligan/Wikimedia Commons/PD US Government

The difficulty of the insanity plea is obvious: Is the defendant really insane with no concept of right or wrong or that he or she had even committed a crime? Or is the defendant just putting on a good show? The controversy over the insanity defense stems from this, as many people believe most are shamming. Take the film Anatomy of a Murder (1959), which was based on a real case that occurred in 1952. In the film, an army lieutenant is accused of shooting a man who had raped the lieutenant’s wife. The defense uses the plea of “irresistible impulse,” a variation of the insanity plea. In the film, we see the defense attorney constantly coaching the defendant on what to say and how to behave to convince the jury of his insanity. And it ends up working. Like Gianini, the lieutenant is saved from the electric chair.

We see the insanity plea used so much on TV and in films (because it makes for great drama) that we might think it’s used very often. In the early 20th century, when my Adele Gossling Mysteries takes place, it was used quite a bit in court cases. But in the 21st century, we’ve gotten wiser and perhaps more cynical. In fact, the insanity plea or a variation of it is used in less than one percent of court cases. And of those one percent, only about a quarter are accepted. It all boils down to whether juries are buying that someone, even if they are mentally ill or emotionally unstable, could really not comprehend either what he or she is doing or that what he or she is doing is wrong. Those cases where the plea is accepted usually show the defendant as having a long history of severe mental illness.

Does mental illness or the insanity plea play a role in A Wordless Death? You can find out by getting your hands on a copy of the book. It’s still on sale at a special launch price, but not for long! All the details and links to book vendors are here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, sign up for my newsletter to receive a free book, plus news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history and mystery, and more freebies! You can sign up here.

Cover Reveal/Release Day Announcement: The Carnation Murder

Every year, I choose a word and/or phrase to define how I want to improve myself. This year, my phrase is “let it go”. I even have a card stuck on my bulletin board to remind me to let things go.

After five years of writing historical women’s fiction, I’m letting it go and turning to something new: historical cozy mysteries. Why? Because I realized who I am now is not who I was five years ago. Historical women’s fiction served me well at that time, and I loved writing the Waxwood Series. But now all I want to give readers is a sense of comfort and a little bit of fun. Nothing spells comfort and fun more than cozy mysteries.

This is why I’m thrilled to present the cover for The Carnation Murder, the first book of my Adele Gossling Mysteries, and tell you when the book is coming out.

So, without further ado…

historical mystery, cozy mystery, women sleuth, new release, ebook, murder mystery, small town mystery

So, y’all probably notice there’s a lot of purple in there, right? There’s a reason for that. The color purple plays a role in helping Adele Gossling solve the mystery of the dead debutante in her gazebo. On a carnation, purple is about whimsy and freedom. How do these qualities appear in the book? You’ll have to read it to find out!

You’ll also notice the gold frame on the book. Originally, the fabulous designer who made the cover went for more of an Art Deco look, using geometric shapes and clean lines and spheres. A great example of Art Deco is these stills from the 1927 silent masterpiece Metropolis.

As much as I love Art Deco, we associate it more with the 1920s and 1930s. The Adele Gossling Mysteries takes place at the turn of the 20^th century, some twenty years earlier. So the designer and I went back and forth, and we finally decided on a more Art Nouveau style for the frame. Art Nouveau was sort of the precursor to the Art Deco movement, combining the favored lines and spheres with a more decorative and florid style. One of the defining artists of this period was Alphonse Mucha, whose work you can see here.

Here’s more about The Carnation Murder:

Smart inquisitive, and a firm believer in the new progressive reforms, Adele Gossling seeks a new life after the devastating death of her father. So she flees the big city of San Francisco for the small town of Arrojo. She plans a life of peace and small pleasures running her own stationery shop and living in her own house. But peace is exactly what she doesn’t get when she discovers her neighbor dead in her gazebo. The police think they have a firm suspect: the young man who was secretly engaged to the victim. But Adele and her clairvoyant new friend Nin Branch suspect the young man is innocent. In spite of the raised eyebrows from Arrojo’s Victorian-minded citizens, she and Nin set out to prove Richard Tanning didn’t do it. But if he didn’t, who did?

What early reviewers are saying:

“Really well paced and researched appropriately for the era.”

“The story comes alive.”

Release Date: April 30, 2022

I’m equally excited to let you know the book is now on preorder at a very special price. So come check it out and get your copy at your favorite online bookstore here.

Happy reading!