BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--AUTHOR CAROLA DUNN ON AUTHOR INSPIRATION

Carola Dunn is the author of twenty-three Daisy Dalrymple mysteries, set in 1920s England; four Cornish mysteries, set in Cornwall around 1970; and more than thirty Regencies. Born in England, she set off around the world after university and made it halfway before returning to the US, where she has lived ever since. Today she joins us to talk about the inspiration for her plots. Learn more about Carola and her books at her website.

Whence plot ideas?

Many of my plot ideas spring from nowhere, or at least, I was too busy writing to bother to trace them back to their origins. But quite a few I still remember years, even decades, later exactly what sparked them. More than once it was a place.

Having picked the setting of The Corpse at the Crystal Palace (US paperback August 27th 2019), because it sounded intriguing, I started to research. One surprising fact struck me: the original Palace, erected in 1851 in Hyde Park, had the first ever public ladies' loo in London. No lady, it was thought, would want to be seen entering such a convenience where anyone who saw her knew on what embarrassing errand she was bound. I instantly decided to murder someone in the ladies room, and to make it more intriguing, the victim was to be a man dressed as a woman. The plot revolved around not only who killed him, but what on earth he was doing there in a Nanny's uniform.

The Tower of London (The Bloody Tower, 2007), with its sinister history, is another place capable of inspiring any number of plots. Its semi-isolated population, including the Lieutenant Governor and his family, the Keeper of the Jewels, the Yeomen of the Guard, and the garrison of Guardsmen with their colonel must be a breeding-ground for all sorts of disagreements, quite apart from the greed engendered by the presence of the Crown Jewels. On a visit to refresh childhood memories, a steep stone outdoor stairway enclosed by high walls struck me as an invitation to shove someone down it. I just had to choose the shover and the shovee and add fog rising from the river...

A very different place, Rocky Valley, a narrow inlet on the coast of northern Cornwall, was the inspiration for Valley of the Shadow (my third Cornish mystery). The steep cliffs on either side offer no way for a swimmer to climb out, but what if Eleanor and co. found a half-drowned man floating there...The cliffs thereabouts are riddled with caves, the haunts of smugglers for centuries, so what would they have been smuggling in the 1970s--not silk stockings, for sure. People? It took a lot of research to find out who and from where were the most likely group of refugees to be desperate to enter Britain.

Research for one book often leads to a plot for another. I came across a mention of the so-called "superfluous women," the over a million British women who were unlikely ever to find a husband because so many young men were slaughtered in WWI. An irresistible subject that formed the background of Superfluous Women (2015), the twenty-first Daisy mystery, in which three young women decide to form a household and find a nasty surprise in the house they acquire.

A great idea for a title can be a starting point. For instance, Styx and Stones (1999) obviously has to be a poison-pen story.  Sometimes leisure reading is the spur: Reading three Regencies each entitled The Fortune Hunter suggested to me to write one about two covert fortune-hunters falling in love with each other (The Fortune Hunters, 1991). And Murder on the Orient Express is entirely responsible for my Murder on the Flying Scotsman (1997), which I made as different as possible from Christie's famous book!

The Corpse at the Crystal Palace

A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery, Book 23

A casual outing to the Crystal Palace in London takes a mysterious and murderous turn in The Corpse at the Crystal Palace, the latest mystery in Carola Dunn’s beloved Daisy Dalrymple series.

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it—bringing her cousins, her 3-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies’ room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

Meanwhile, Belinda and the cousins spot Mrs. Gilpin chasing after yet another nanny. Intrigued, they trail the two through the vast Crystal Palace and into the park. After briefly losing sight of their quarry, they stumble across Mrs. Gilpin lying unconscious in a small lake inhabited by huge concrete dinosaurs.

When she comes to, Mrs. Gilpin can't remember what happened after leaving the twins in the nurserymaid's care. Daisy's husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the murdered nanny. Worried about her children's own injured nanny, Daisy is determined to help. First she has to discover the identity of the third nanny, the presumed murderer, and to do so, Daisy must uncover why the amnesic Mrs. Gilpin deserted her charges to follow the missing third nanny.

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#COOKING WITH CLORIS--MYSTERY AUTHOR CAROLA DUNN WHIPS UP HOLIDAY TRIFLE

Carola Dunn was born and grew up in England but has lived in the US for the past 50 years or so. In spite of this, almost all her books are set in England, including twenty-three mysteries in the 1920’s era Daisy Dalrymple series, four Cornish Mysteries set around 1970, thirty-two Regency novels, and four collections of Regency novellas. Learn more about Carola and her books at her website. 

Holiday Trifle

Trifle is an English dessert dating from 1598 (first citation in print according to the OED). At that time the word referred to a mixture of cream boiled with other ingredients, more like what we call a “fool” today. By 1755, it was much like what we know today as trifle. My Aunt Margery (actually a second cousin a few time removed) used to make trifle for the holidays. I don't have her recipe, and in fact, I don't use a recipe at all, but this is how I make it yearly for Christmas Eve dinner with friends.

 I have to say, the first time I brought it on Christmas Eve, it was looked at askance by a few who aren't into desserts--but they are the ones who came back for more!

Ingredients – exact quantities are unimportant—guidelines below

Plain cake—I've used angel food from a mix, and bakery pound cake, but the most popular was homemade sponge cake that was actually a complete failure—the two layers each came out about 3/8” thick. For some things you really have to follow the recipe!

Raspberries—I freeze my own every summer, but this is one time frozen work better, because they have lots of juice.  (Some people use jam/jelly or jelly/jello, unsatisfactory in my opinion, or soak the cake in sherry, which I don't care for.)

Custard—I use Bird's Custard Powder, but vanilla pudding is more or less equivalent.

Whipped cream—Here I'm really fussy. Spray can cream does NOT work. Even grocery store whipping cream, which usually comes full of thickeners such as carrageen, is not that great. I use heavy cream (unadulterated) from a local dairy, or Trader Joe has an excellent heavy cream. If you love whipped cream, you probably have your own source.

Glacé cherries for decoration—or fresh raspberries if available.

Trifle is attractive in a glass bowl, but any bowl—preferably flat-bottomed—works well. The bowl in the photos is 6-1/4” x 3-1/4” deep. I made two roughly the same size using about ¾ of a small pound cake, a 12 oz bag of frozen raspberries, a pint of custard, and a ½ pint of cream. It would be enough for 6 or 8 people. Or it can be made in individual glasses such as sundae glasses.

Place slices of cake about 1” to 1½” deep in bottom of small bowl or 2 to 2½ in large bowl. I fill in gaps with scraps of cake.

Pour juice from bag more or less evenly over cake to soak in. Distribute berries in an even layer on top.

Make custard or pudding. Cool slightly (so it doesn't cook the berries) and pour on top before it completely thickens.

Chill.

Whip cream till really stiff—beyond stiff peaks (but don't let it turn into butter!) unless you're going to serve the trifle immediately and you know there won't be any left over. Even with the best cream, stiff peaks will weep after a few hours. Good cream doesn't need any flavouring. If you have to use grocery store whipping cream, you might want to flavour it with a spoonful of powdered sugar and/or a drop of vanilla.

Spread on top of cooled custard. Decorate.

Serve with a large spoon (a cake server doesn't work well), preferably in glass bowls.

Enjoy!

The Corpse at the Crystal Palace

A Daisy Dalrymple Mystery, Book 23

April 1928: Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is visited in London by her young cousins. On the list of must-see sites is the Crystal Palace. Discovering that her children's nanny, Nanny Gilpin, has never seen the Palace, Daisy decides to make a day of it―bringing her cousins, her 3-year-old twins, her step-daughter Belinda, the nurserymaid, and Nanny Gilpin. Yet this ordinary outing goes wrong when Mrs. Gilpin goes off to the ladies’ room and fails to return. When Daisy goes to look for her, she doesn't find her nanny but instead the body of another woman dressed in a nanny's uniform.

Meanwhile, Belinda and the cousins spot Mrs. Gilpin chasing after yet another nanny. Intrigued, they trail the two through the vast Crystal Palace and into the park. After briefly losing sight of their quarry, they stumble across Mrs. Gilpin lying unconscious in a small lake inhabited by huge concrete dinosaurs.

When she comes to, Mrs. Gilpin can't remember what happened after leaving the twins in the nurserymaid's care. Daisy's husband, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the murdered nanny. Worried about her children's own injured nanny, Daisy is determined to help. First she has to discover the identity of the third nanny, the presumed murderer, and to do so, Daisy must uncover why the amnesic Mrs. Gilpin deserted her charges to follow the missing third nanny.

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(For a Daisy Dalrymple murder mystery, check out Mistletoe and Murder, Book 11.) 

#CORNWALL WALKING PATHS WITH GUEST AUTHOR CAROLA DUNN

Carola Dunn is the author of twenty-six mysteries and thirty-two Regencies. She was born and grew up in England but has lived in the US for many years. When not writing, she enjoys gardening, reading, and walking the dog. She has two grandchildren and cannot believe one is a teenager. Where did the years go? Learn more about Carola and her books at her website. 

The Joy of Walking

One of the features of England that I miss most here in the US, at least in the West, is the public foot paths. They crisscross the countryside, paying no heed to boundaries, climbing over walls and fences with the aid of stiles, crossing farmers' fields as freely as woods, hills, and dales.

Many of the paths are of ancient origin, medieval at least. Legally they are rights of way and can't be closed by landowners. The Ramblers organization zealously guards the public's access.

Cornwall, like the rest of the country, has footpaths everywhere. The main character of my Cornish mysteries, Eleanor, loves walking with her Westie Teazle on the cliffs and moors. She enjoys it the more because she spent most of her adventurous life traveling the world, working for an international charity.

On retiring to Cornwall, Eleanor looks forward to tranquility. She settles in a small fishing port on the North Coast and opens a charity shop, a peaceful occupation. But human nature is the same the world over. When crime comes to Port Mabyn, Eleanor finds the skills learned in far off places are not forgotten and become useful once again.

In the fourth book in the series, Buried in the Country, Eleanor’s talent for diplomacy is called upon by a friend from the past, a government official. He is holding a secret conference at a hotel on the cliffs near Tintagel, and he wants Eleanor to smooth relations between the antagonistic participants.

Megan's niece, Detective Sergeant Megan Pencarrow, is helping with security for the conference, although she's already on another case, the disappearance of a local solicitor. When two strangers turn up at the hotel, she can see they're villains. What she can't guess is whether they're a threat to the conference, connected somehow with the lawyer's disappearance, or contemplating some other nefarious business.

Now Eleanor's enjoyment of walking becomes vital to the story. Her description of the view of King Arthur's legendary castle ruins from the cliff top paths inspires enthusiasm in the young people. Their insistence on going for a walk, whatever the risk of being seen, leads to the revelation of what the two London villains are up to.

Caught in the act, the villains flee with hostages. The ensuing car chase takes them to fog-bound Bodmin Moor at dusk. Eleanor's familiarity with the rural byways helps Megan to follow and to rendezvous with her colleagues. They end up on Bodmin Moor, where the murderers disappear into the fog.

Night is falling. It seems they'll escape. But Eleanor often walks here. She knows the lay of the land and all the hazards: bogs, old mine shafts, precipitous quarry walls. She describes it for the searchers, and when she's denied a part in the search, she goes off hunting on her own.

Using every scrap of her local knowledge, combined with her talent at diplomacy and a few tricks she's learned in foreign parts, Eleanor emerges from the fog triumphant: She has captured one of the villains and he's spilled the beans.

Walking the footpaths of England, you are not at all likely to meet a murderer, of course. Nor will you meet a bear, a cougar, a skunk, a porcupine, or a rattlesnake; you won't even encounter poison oak or poison ivy!

Buried in the Country

After many years working around the world for an international charity in the late 1960s, Eleanor Trewynn has retired to the relative quiet of a small town in Cornwall. But her quiet life is short-lived when, due to her experience, the Commonwealth Relations Office reaches out to her to assist in a secret conference that is to take place in a small hotel outside the historical village of Tintagel.

Meanwhile, her niece, Detective Sargent Megan Pencarrow, is investigating the disappearance of a local solicitor when she is assigned to help provide security for the conference. Two African students, refugees from Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, arrive for the conference, escorted by Megan’s bête noire from Scotland Yard. They are followed by two mysterious and sinister Londoners, whose allegiances and connections to the conference and the missing solicitor are unclear. With a raging storm having trapped everyone in the hotel, the stage is set for murder, and it’s up to Eleanor and Megan to uncover the truth before more lives are lost.

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#COOKING WITH CLORIS--AUTHOR CAROLA DUNN'S YORKSHIRE PUDDING #RECIPE

photo courtesy of kitchensavvy

Carola Dunn was born and grew up in England. Most of her books are set there, though she’s lived in the US for several decades. She is the author of twenty-two Daisy Dalrymple mysteries, three Cornish mysteries, and thirty-two Regencies. Learn more about Carola and her books at her website. 

In my new book, Superfluous Women, the 22nd Daisy Dalrymple mystery set in England in the 1920s, Daisy and her husband Alec, a Scotland Yard detective, are invited to Sunday lunch with friends who have recently moved to a new house. The previous resident was said to have a notable wine cellar, but it's locked and the key has disappeared. Hoping to find a nice vintage overlooked in a corner, Alec picks the lock and discovers a long dead and very pongy body. Everyone has to leave the house in a hurry.

"I suppose no one's going to feel like sitting down to roast beef," Isabel said regretfully. "Oh well, it can be eaten cold, and the gravy will reheat. I can rescue the potatoes, too, and the carrots, but the Yorkshire pudding'll be a dead loss."

In the hope that you won't be finding a body shortly before eating, here is the story on Yorkshire Pudding:

Traditionally, Yorkshire pudding is an accompaniment to roast beef, though the first known published recipe (1737) pairs it with roast leg of lamb. The meat was cooked on a spit over an open fire. The batter pudding was cooked in a pan placed below the meat, in the hottest part of the fire, so that it absorbed drippings from the meat. The best Yorkshire pudding is still made with beef drippings.

In poorer households, where a joint of meat was a rare treat, the pudding was eaten first, with gravy. By the time the meat was served, the edge was taken off appetites and they were satisfied with a smaller portion. These days, it's usually served along with the meat, often for Sunday lunch.

My mother made the best Yorkshire pudding I've ever had. The recipe she gave me is headed Pancakes (in Britspeak pancakes are crêpes) or Yorkshire. The same batter can be used for either. The ingredients are few. The art is all in the cooking.

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour

pinch of salt

1 large egg or 2 medium (1 egg works fine for crêpes; most recipes call for 2 for Yorkshire.)

1/2 pint (imperial=10 fl. oz.) milk

Add salt to flour in a mixing bowl. Beat the egg slightly and stir into flour. Add the milk gradually, beating with a wooden spoon. When thoroughly blended, allow to sit for an hour or more (preferably not refrigerated as cold batter doesn't rise properly).

When you take your roast from the oven for its "resting" period, turn up the heat to 450. Pour about 3 tablespoons of the drippings into a 9” x 12” pan (or use the roast pan if the right size and pour off most of the drippings.) You can lightly oil or butter the pan if preferred, though you won't get the best flavor. Put the pan in the oven and leave to heat to 450.

Stir the batter gently a couple of times. Pour into sizzling-hot pan and return to oven quickly. Cook for 20 minutes to 1/2 hour. DO NOT open the oven door to peek or the pudding will deflate (Ovens differ so it's hard to be precise but you can always trim off a burned edge.)

Cut into squares and serve sizzling hot with meat and plenty of gravy.

And please invite me to dinner.

Superfluous Women

In England in the late 1920s, The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher, on a convalescent trip to the countryside, goes to visit three old school friends in the area. The three, all unmarried, have recently bought a house together. They are a part of the generation of "superfluous women"--brought up expecting marriage and a family, but left without any prospects after more than 700,000 British men were killed in the Great War.

Daisy and her husband Alec--Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher, of Scotland Yard--go for a Sunday lunch with Daisy's friends, where one of the women mentions a wine cellar below their house, which remains curiously locked, no key to be found. Alec offers to pick the lock, but when he opens the door, what greets them is not a cache of wine, but the stench of a long-dead body.

And with that, what was a pleasant Sunday lunch has taken an unexpected turn. Now Daisy's three friends are the most obvious suspects in a murder and her husband Alec is a witness, so he can't officially take over the investigation. So before the local detective, Superintendent Underwood, can officially bring charges against her friends, Daisy is determined to use all her resources (Alec) and skills to solve the mystery behind this perplexing locked-room crime.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY - GUEST AUTHOR CAROLA DUNN

Our guest today is Carola Dunn, author of 20 Daisy Dalrymple mysteries (England 1920s), 3 Cornish Mysteries (Cornwall, c. 1970), and 32 Regencies (all over the world, early 1800s). She was born and grew up in England and has lived in the US for more decades than she cares to count, presently in Oregon, where her dog, Trillian, walks her by the Willamette River daily (not including the past few weeks as during their last walk Carola carelessly managed to break four bones in her foot.) Read more about Carola at her website. – AP 

I must apologize to devoted readers of Lois's blog. It is crafty and I am not. Nor are most of the characters in my mysteries (not in that sense, at least).

I used to knit, decorate stuff with shells, make mobiles, even paint  a little (my painting is definitely craft not art). I've been taught to crochet at least three times but it never stuck.

Looking back, I think I stopped crafting when I ceased to own a TV. It's great to create things when you can watch at the same time, but I spend that time reading, and it just doesn't combine well. Or maybe when I started writing full-time, all my creativity was channeled into that.

Having confessed my craftlessness, I now recall that my first Cornish mystery, Manna from Hades, begins with some knittery. My protagonist, Eleanor Trewynn, is collecting donations for her charity shop:

"We put in several frogs, Mrs Trewynn," said Miss Annabel Willis anxiously. "You did say they were well received?"

 "Very well indeed, Miss Annabel. They sold in no time. My thanks to both of you for your hard work and generosity." Eleanor lifted the big cardboard box, whose faint, sweet fragrance bore out the logo on its sides: Co-op Tea. It was more awkward than heavy.

"It's a pleasure to do what little we can to help," the elder Miss Willis assured her from her wheelchair, her knitting needles clicking away tirelessly, producing yet another green and yellow frog.

Later, when the Detective Inspector is looking for evidence in the shop:

Scumble stood glowering at a bin of colourful woolly animals. A grass-green, yellow-bellied, goggle-eyed frog grinned back at him.

Eleanor's next-door neighbour, Nick, paints, but he's an artist, not a crafter. However, when he's suspected of murder in the second book, A Colourful Death, in seeking to clear him  Eleanor spends a night at an artists' commune. Some of the residents are crafters, a potter, a knitter, a shell-worker, all on a commercial scale.

The nearest anyone gets to crafting in the third of the series, The Valley of the Shadow, is a bit of prospective sanding and polishing. A farmer donates an ancient wooden cart-wheel, and Eleanor knows someone will buy it for a decoration once her friend Jocelyn, the vicar's wife, has cleaned it up.

I seem to remember an occasional character knitting in the twenty Daisy Dalrymple mysteries, too. It was quite a fashionable occupation in England in the 1920s.

All in all, my books are not quite so devoid of handicrafts as I thought when I embarked on this essay. And I promise I'll have another go at making things when I retire from writing—if that ever comes to pass.

Valley of the Shadow

“The sights and sounds of the coast of Cornwall come alive in The Valley of the Shadow. The rescue of a drowning Indian man leads to a race against time to rescue his family, trapped in the smugglers’ caves on the rocky shore. Feisty retiree Eleanor Trewynn enlists her fellow villagers in tracking down those responsible for abandoning the refugees — but will the smugglers find her first? Dunn gives us a thoroughly enjoyable, cozy suspense novel — one with a social conscience.” —Carol Schneck Varner, Schuler Books & Music, Okemos, MI

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Thanks for joining us today, Carola, and we all wish you a speedy recovery from your broken foot bones. -- AP

THIS WEEK'S BOOK WINNER

Thanks to all who stopped by this week at Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers. We hope you'll come back often and also tell your friends about us. We have lots of exciting posts and guests planned for the months ahead. I’d also like to thank Carola Dunn for being our Book Club Friday guest and offering a copy of Requiem for a Mezzo to one of our readers who posted a comment this week. The winner this week is Pat Dale. Pat, please email your mailing addresses to me at anastasiapollack@gmail.com, I’ll forward the information to Carola, and she’ll mail the book to you. 

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY -- GUEST AUTHOR CAROLA DUNN

Our guest today at Book Club Friday is multi-published mystery author Carola Dunn. Carola writes the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries, set in 1920s England, and the Cornish mysteries set in the 1960s in Cornwall. She has also written 32 Regencies. You can read more about Carola at her blog and website. Today Carola talks about killers and how they come in all shapes and sizes. Carola is also offering a copy of Requiem for a Mezzo to one lucky reader who posts a comment to the blog this week. -- AP

Killers come in all shapes and sizes. Having just finished writing the 20th mystery in my Daisy Dalrymple series, I'm constantly looking for new variations.

For a start, I prefer the word "killer" to "murderer." Not all homicides are murder. Some of the unnatural deaths in my books involve assault not intended to cause death, accident, self-defence, or defence of others. This allows some of my killers to be sympathetic characters. In turn this allows Daisy to hold—and act on—a different view of Justice from that of her husband, DCI Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard, who's sworn to uphold the Law.

They haven't yet quite reached the point where they want to kill each other! 

Of course, some of my killer characters commit deliberate murder. Their motives ring the changes on the basics: greed, jealousy, fear, revenge, anger. They are male and female, young and old, rich and poor. Some are crafty (pun intended); some are not too bright and are not arrested immediately more through luck than cleverness. They are otherwise pleasant people who would probably never kill again if they weren't caught, and unpleasant people who are a danger to society.

But however desperate for new twists, I don't create homicidal maniacs. I'm just not really interested in someone who kills for pleasure, or from an irresistible impulse to kill. I prefer to explore the motive(s) of a person who feels he or she has a compelling reason that we can understand, even if we can't imagine ever taking it to the lengths of murder. 

Thanks so much for being our guest today, Carola! Readers, if you'd like a chance to win Requiem for a Mezzo, leave a comment, and be sure to check back on Sunday to see if you're the lucky winner. -- AP