Transcript
Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast, where you’ll discover new mystery books and authors. I’m USA Today best selling mystery author Sara Rosett. I’m also a bookworm who specializes in the mystery genre. I love sharing my favorite mystery discoveries from classic golden age novels to contemporary cozies. This is a bonus episode, and it’s all about my Christmas mystery Murder on a Midnight Clear. So Murder on a Midnight Clear was published this week, and it’s the sixth book in the High Society Lady Detective series.
Now, if you’ve been listening for a while, you realize that I’m breaking my own rule about always doing the first book in a series. And honestly, I am finding that rule rather confining because I think of books and I’m like, “Oh, I want to talk about this one!” But I have not done the first book in the series. So I feel like that’s going to be a rule that’s going to be broken. There’s so many good books that are later in the series and I can’t always go back and do the first book in the series because then I’ll never get to the new books. But I do promise, as always, no spoilers. So whether I talk about the first book or a book later on, there will be no spoilers.
Book Blurb
All right. Onto the blurb. “A snowbound country mansion, a missing butler, and a Christmas case. Olive and Jasper have never been closer except in one area. Jasper is still reticent about his frequent disappearances from polite society. With the holidays approaching and no paying client on the books, Olive decides to shadow Jasper when he’s unexpectedly called away. Her search brings her to Holly Hill Lodge, where an eccentric group has gathered to celebrate an old fashioned English Christmas. When the butler goes missing, Olive and Jasper must work together to solve the Christmas crime as well as the secret Jasper hides.” So the first line of this book is “Despite the grey cloud hanging low over London, the city sparkled with Christmas cheer.”
Story Behind the Story
Now some fun facts. And the story behind the story about this book is the main thing about this book is that I always knew it would be a Christmas book. As I’m going through the series, we’re progressing through the year, pretty much a book each month. So the previous book, book five took place in Novemberish. So I knew that this book would be in December and I really wanted to write a Christmas mystery. I’d written other Christmas mysteries set in my contemporary series, but this one I wanted to do a historical. And I like the idea of writing the, you know, old fashioned English Christmas and including all the old fashioned English Christmasy things. So I knew it would be set in December.
And the spark that set this story off actually happened at the end of book five, which is how the series is going. As I’m finishing up one book, I’m usually kind of coming around to the idea of what Olive can investigate next. And I didn’t really have an idea until I got to the last scene in book five, where she is realizing she really doesn’t know a whole lot about Jasper. It’s kind of coming home to her that he’s not revealing a lot about himself. And so she wants to know more about what he does. She’s not one to sit around and wait for things. So she begins a little investigation of her own into what he’s been doing. And so that was the beginning. And I thought, “What if he goes to a country house where there’s an old fashioned English Christmas celebration in progress?” And of course, Olive will follow him there and they will be snowed in and there will be a death that they will have to solve while they’re there. You know, no one can get there to investigate it. It will be up to them to solve the case.
The other thing that comes to mind when I think about this book is that I went on a research trip to London in March of 2020. So after reading that opening line that brought that back to mind, the story opens, Olive is on her way to Harrods to meet her cousin Gwen for tea. And it just makes me think of when we were in London walking around: we went to Harrods; we did all kinds of fun things there; we went to Mayfair, walked around; we went to afternoon tea; went to a play; we went to some London townhomes. No country estates, though, sadly, because it was too early in the year for most of them to be open. And then when we were in the middle of this, this was like the last week of February, the first week of March, the news came out about Covid-19 and Italy locked down. And we thought, “OK, we’ve got to go home.” So we left early. We actually cut the visit short and came home and then the whole world basically locked down. So that will always be linked in my mind.
But I did get to have a really good visit and see a lot of London that I was able to use in this story. What I found out is that there are a lot of places, the places to be the the townhomes, the shops and stores and the restaurants and the places that Olive would have gone to. A lot of those don’t exist anymore. Or if they were, you know, a beautiful townhome, they’ve been torn down and a building has been built there like a hotel or they’ve been turned into like something like an embassy. A lot of my research had to happen in books and online as I looked at old photographs. But it was great to walk around London and get just the sense of what it feels like to be there. And the sense of space and kind of the layout of the city, the major landmarks, you know, have not changed. Buckingham Palace still there, and all those things that, you know, have endured. And the streets and the parks and all that, that’s all the same. So that was really good. And it was, I think it’s like the third time I’ve been to London. So it was good to go while I was in the middle of thinking about these books and thinking about London from a historical perspective, because I’ve always written about it from a contemporary perspective. So that was really helpful for me for writing this book.
Themes and Tropes
All right. Onto themes. So, of course, the major theme in this one is Christmas. And I put everything Christmassy into it that I could think of carols and Christmas cards and gifts and Yule log and decorating the tree and all the Christmas foods. I just tried to include all of that. And I incorporated many parts of that into the mystery itself. So related to that would be another theme would be Secrets and Ciphers. But I can’t tell you any more about that because that would be a spoiler.
So moving right along to tropes. So of course, the major trope in this one is Being Snowbound. They’re, trapped at this country manor. This is a very common trope for cozy mysteries, historical mysteries, contemporary mysteries, even. You’re trapped. Your characters are trapped in this little world. And, you know, for me, I used snow, but you can use other things: weather, accidents that, you know, block the roads, things like that. So they’re stuck there. And if a death happens, then, of course, you’ve got a sleuth who’s proactive, and she’s going to figure out what happened. She’s not going to wait around for the police to show up.
Another related trope would be that the people who were at this country mansion are sort of An Eclectic Mix. Now, one way to do this trope is to have all of your suspects isolated at this location, and it’s a family. That’s a very common; Agatha Christie used that a lot? So you’d have, you know, these families that live together in these country homes and it would be various branches of the family lived there. So I didn’t do that. I wanted to have all kinds of different people there. And so my conceit for this was that the woman who is the lady of the manor, she loves to take people under her wing. And there’s several people that she thinks, “Oh, they just need… They don’t have anywhere to go this Christmas, and they need to experience a good old fashioned English Christmas.” So she has an aunt who she invites, but then almost everyone else who comes is not related to her. I just really had fun bringing together all these kind of interesting, different types of people and personalities.
Just to run through them quickly: we have a scientist who’s studying snowflakes and that was inspired by a real person. I included some famous lawn tennis champions. A persuasive luggage salesman, and that was fascinating, researching the luggage of the 1920s.
That was like a rabbit hole that I went down for probably far longer than I should have. But it was just interesting because to look at how luggage has changed, you know. In the turn of the century, they were still using these humongous trunks that were almost as big as like a wardrobe. And as travel changed, their luggage changed as well because they needed smaller cases that they could carry. As air travel became more popular, people didn’t want to carry around these humongous trunks and they couldn’t. So these aeroplane cases became the thing that people wanted, smaller, lighter. They could handle them themselves. They didn’t have to get a porter. So of course, I was like, “Let’s have a luggage salesman.” He’s an American. He’s traveling around England trying to sell people his aeroplane cases. He has a prototype. And because he was an American, I got to include all kinds of American slang from the 20s, which is very different from British slang. So he would say things like, “Let me put you wise.” So that was fun to include all that.
And then we also had a famous lady explorer. And the eccentric aunt who has a lot of fondness for newfangled drinks like cocktails. And she doesn’t always choose the correct word when she’s speaking. She mixes up her words easily. So that provides a little humor in the book. And I have to say, this was a really fun group and I really enjoyed writing this book. I enjoyed the characters that I may have to bring some of them back in other books in the future.
Quotes
All right. A quote to end with. This is the lady explorer who realizes that Olive and Jasper are keeping something from everyone else about the disappearance of the butler. And so the lady explorer, her name is Blix. And she says, “I’m quite fond of a jolly little Christmas mystery.” And I would have to agree; I am very fond of a jolly little Christmas mystery.
So that leads us to the question that I would love to know your answer to. What is your favorite Christmas mystery? I would love to know. You can tag me on social media; I’m on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, mostly on Instagram. And this post will have a blog post on my website. So you can comment there as well. Before I go, I’m going to give you a quick sample from the audiobook read by the wonderful Elizabeth Klett.
(Excerpt of Murder on a Midnight Clear)
That was Elizabeth Klett reading Murder on a Midnight Clear, the sixth book in my High Society Lady Detective series. So if you’re interested in this book, you can find the e-book everywhere. The print book is everywhere. The audio book is out. It’s a little delayed. Audible is running quite slow. So if you’re interested in that, I have a link on my website to order it directly from me. And I also have a special edition signed numbered hardback available and I have hand stamped the end pages with snowflakes. So if you are interested in a hardcover edition, you can find that on my website, and I’ll put the links in the show notes. I’ll be back in a few weeks with the new season. Thanks for listening.
Links:
Ebook/print/audio online stores
Buy print book from an indie bookstore, Murder by the Book
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