"You Know My Methods, Watson!" Murder, Historically Speaking with M.R. Graham

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Welcome to ThrillWriting!

It's not so "elementary, Watson," when it comes to writing a historical mystery.

M.R.
I know a lot of would-be historical writers are daunted by research and have no idea where to begin, but that's something I do in academia, so I can shed some light on process and resources.

And of course, the importance of pretty rigorous research when you're messing with social issues. For example, there are still strong ties between poverty and crime, and even stronger PERCEPTION of the ties between poverty and crime, and it gets really sensitive.

Fiona - 
Let's start there - can you give me a your background as it pertains to preparing to write a historical novel?

M.R.- 

I'm actually in education and anthropology, not specifically history, but research methods between the two are extremely similar. 

I've taught college students how to conduct research of the library-and-journal variety, without putting too much faith in shallow, often questionable sources like Wikipedia. Working in academia, you realize pretty quickly how little a Wikipedia article really tells you, even if all of the facts are totally accurate. They don't provide context, and they rarely provide conflicting interpretations of theories or events. They're overviews, and that's okay, because that's all they're supposed to be. But that's not enough for someone who wants to portray a complex and nuanced culture, whether in another place or another time. 

The past really is another culture. People thought differently than we do, now, in a lot more subtle and varied ways than the "everyone was a bigot" or "it's all about manners" portrayals we often get. I do recommend at least a cursory study of anthropology for historical fiction writers, just to get a feel for the ways one culture CAN differ from another, things that are so ingrained in our way of thinking that we assume they're human nature, when they're actually learned attitudes.

Fiona -
You have a book that's been included in the Murder and Mayhem boxed set. Can you tell me about that book and how you applied your unique expertise to the plot line?

M.R. - 

Absolutely. My contribution is titled No Cage for a Crow, and while it's historical fiction, it's also more specifically pastiche, placed in Victorian London, directly into the world of Sherlock Holmes. 

This one has actually been in the works for about twenty-five years, now, and it's the first story I ever began, so the research for it has been going since before I really knew what research was. (I was rather small, twenty-five years ago.) A lot of it was just mounded-up knowledge I collected without rhyme or reason, and unsurprisingly, the story went nowhere fast. 

Sadly, a lot of it also came from historical fiction I read as a teenager, and I've had to un-learn a lot of things I thought I knew. It was about ten years ago that I actually got methodical about it, and from that point, the writing has become easier, and the history sounder. All research starts with a question, and the one I chose was "Where are all the women in Sherlock Holmes's world?" Now of course, there are women mentioned. An awful lot of them come to Holmes for help. There's Mrs. Hudson downstairs. There's Irene Adler. But Doyle's work is overwhelmingly masculine. I always meant to write about Sherlock Holmes's sister, but I honestly didn't know what that kind of story would look like. 

I needed to know what was going on with the other half of the population. 

It may sound counter intuitive, but I actually turned to fiction, first. It's important to note, though, that I turned to fiction written BY women DURING the period I was interested in - people who ought to know what they're talking about. As I read, I made notes every time I didn't understand something: a word I didn't know, or a reference to a person or event. The list came out to several composition notebooks full. And I took the time to look up every one of them. Wikipedia was perfectly useful for this part. If anything sounded really significant, like something real people would have strong feelings about, I took the inquiry to Google Scholar, which is a great free resource everyone should know how to use. GS has lots of primary-source accounts, like archived letters, diaries, newspaper articles... the things that would tell you how people felt.

Fiona - 
And you picked a time frame that appealed to you. What called to you about the Victorian age and what did you discover that you found intriguing enough to weave into your plot?

M.R. - 
I was always drawn to the Victorian age. At first it was just because my grandmother was obsessed with it and talked about it constantly, but the more I found out, the more fascinated I became with the sudden, rapid change. It was the first time in history that the end of a decade could look dramatically different from the beginning, in terms of technology and social change. It threw people for a loop, even then. People suddenly had to learn how to use new technology, when for millennia, everyone had used basically the same stuff their parents had. 

And people were suddenly granted rights, denied privileges, starting to move up and down the social ladder, and no one knew how to deal with it. I have a radical suffragist in my story, as well as some social climbing and social plummeting, which really upset what had previously been a rigid class system. 

People at the time pretended the class system was still rigid, even though it wasn't! And part of the way they fooled themselves was to link class to morality. In the middle ages, there was a strong concept of the virtuous peasant, someone who did his job and worked hard and never complained unless there was a famine or something. By the Victorian age, this idea had developed of a strong division between the "deserving poor" and the "criminal poor". Of course there are some good poor people, but most of the poor are where they are because they're intellectually and morally inferior! It was widely believed that there was something genetically criminal about the poor, and something genetically noble about the nobility. (Unsurprising that the English language links wealth with honor.) Looking back at actual court records, it's actually more likely that the nobility were pretty skeevy, just rarely convicted.

Fiona -
Absolutely fascinating! I am hungry to read you novel, but am also hungry to look at your research notes. When my children were little they read the Magic Tree House Series and there was a novel with an accompanying factual book - just throwing that out there.

We have a tradition of asking about your favorite scar or harrowing story - will you indulge us?

M.R. - 
None of my scars have interesting stories, sadly! (I face-planted off a bus, once?) My most harrowing adventure was my senior trip. My mom took me and my grandmother and my little sister to Italy, but we routed through Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. And while we were there, my grandmother's nose started bleeding and would not stop. We didn't know why, and we couldn't continue on to Italy. She was taken to the indigent hospital, which apparently is where you go if you're foreign. It's also in a part of town where the taxi refused to take us! It took us ages to get there after her, and then we had to get a hotel room in this part of town where taxis won't go. Long story short, we were stuck in a very scary part of Paris for three days, not knowing why my grandmother wouldn't clot. The hospital staff was wonderful, though. Incredibly kind. I no longer let anyone claim the French are rude when I can hear them.

Fiona - 

I've been to that hospital. The ambulance took an American girl to the hospital because she was bleeding out. They asked me to go and translate. When we got to the first hospital, the doctors stopped the bleeding but said we had to go to the other hospital. They had her on a gurney with an IV, pushed her out the door, and drew a map on how to get there. I pushed this chick - whom, I never met before, down the road, with cars passing and everything--the IV dangling from one of my hands--in the not so nice part of the city. I was terrified. I'm mean - what the bloody heck? LOL But it was lovely once we arrived, and the hospital staff took good care of her.

Before we give them a blurb of your wonderful work as an individual novel, folks should note that this work is coming out soon in a fabulous boxed set!

M.R. -
I can't believe how fortunate I've been to have the chance to work with the great authors in this set. These are some big names, some I've admired from afar for a while, and having had the chance to preview the work they'll be including, I think everyone ought to be as excited about it as I am.

ThrillReaders and ThrillWriters, it's been my pleasure to get to know M.R. while working on our boxed set Murder and Mayhem. We would very much appreciate your support. Could you take a moment and order our boxed set? 99 CENTS for 20 Books - all by award winning, authors including USA Today and NY Times bestselling authors. We are hoping to make the lists with this set and every single sale is appreciated. Thank you! (HERE)

To stay in touch with M.R.:

https://quiestinliteris.com/
facebook.com/authormrgraham
twitter.com/quiestinliteris
goodreads.com/mrgraham

Sherlock Holmes has become legend,

 but his sister was lost to history. In one hellish night, Morrigan Holmes ruined everything: her home, her family, her confidence, and her name. Fleeing scandal, loss, and grief, her only choice is to run, but London’s gaslit streets are not kind to young women alone. Within hours, she discovers the horrors of homelessness and the terrible invisibility of the marginalised poor. A child is kidnapped before her eyes, and she barely escapes the same fate. Adrift and alone, Morrigan seeks help in strange quarters: a radical suffragist with a haunted past, a half-blind journalist, a sinister physician, and a gang of street boys led by the striking and enigmatic Magpie. As the number of kidnappings grows, something dark begins to take shape in the London mists. Time is short, still Morrigan cannot escape the family she devastated. Could Sherlock be her salvation… or her destruction?

quiestinliteris.com

facebook.com/authormrgraham

twitter.com/quiestinliteris

goodreads.com/mrgraham






M.R. Graham

Author






Sherlock Holmes has become legend, but his sister was lost to history. In one hellish night, Morrigan Holmes ruined everything: her home, her family, her confidence, and her name. Fleeing scandal, loss, and grief, her only choice is to run, but London’s gaslit streets are not kind to young women alone. Within hours, she discovers the horrors of homelessness and the terrible invisibility of the marginalised poor. A child is kidnapped before her eyes, and she barely escapes the same fate. Adrift and alone, Morrigan seeks help in strange quarters: a radical suffragist with a haunted past, a half-blind journalist, a sinister physician, and a gang of street boys led by the striking and enigmatic Magpie. As the number of kidnappings grows, something dark begins to take shape in the London mists. Time is short, still Morrigan cannot escape the family she devastated. Could Sherlock be her salvation… or her destruction?



I can't believe how fortunate I've been to have the chance to work with the great authors in this set. These are some big names, some I've admired from afar for a while, and having had the chance to preview the work they'll be including, I think everyone ought to be as excited about it as I am.

LOL - thank you. Cheers I will have this to you Sunday for you to review. Changes may have to wait a few days. My SAR team is searching for a lost person in the national forest and I'll be off grid Sunday day. Then we are on standby for the hurricane - so it all depends on how things go.



Oh, whoa! Be careful and be safe! Best of luck. :<THU 9:34PM

Thank you kindly.







Chat Conversation End













Type a message...

Criminologists: Information for Writers with Diana Bretherick

Fiona -
Welcome, Diana. Can you tell the readers where you're from

and what you do (besides, of course, write fabulous books.)

Diana - 
Originally I am from Warwickshire in the heart of England, but I now live and work in Portsmouth, on the South Coast. I started my working life as a lawyer - a barrister. But after working in the law for 10 years, I wanted a change. So I worked as a counselor for prisoners in Brixton, London. At that time, I also began to study criminology - the theory of crime. I fell in love with that and became an academic.

Fiona -
Can you tell me more about the academic studies of criminal subjects?

Diana- 
I studied for a Masters in criminology and followed it with a PhD in Criminology - where I specialized in Crime and Popular Culture. I did a second Masters in Creative Writing, and I am now studying for a second PhD in Creative Writing. I have brought into my work my love of crime fiction - reading and writing it. The best thing about criminology is that it can incorporate lots of disciplines including policing, criminal law, forensics and psychology as well as cultural criminology. That's why I love it!

As a criminologist I study the causes and consequences of crime and teach at the University of Portsmouth. My particular interest is how crime and criminals are represented in the media and popular culture - so anything from the news to films and TV drama as well as crime fiction. My novel, City of Devils, is a historical novel set in 19th century Turin, home of the first criminologist Cesare Lombroso who is one of the central characters in my story. He believed that some criminals were born rather than bred into crime and that they shared characteristics of primitive man. He also thought that you could identify a criminal by looking at their physical characteristics. The novel tells the story of what happens when he is challenged to use his theories to solve a series of macabre murders. Each victim is horribly mutilated and left with a note, written in blood, saying 'A Tribute to Lombroso'.

Cesare Lombroso, Wikipedia

Fiona-
Very cool premise for a novel. So you don't study criminals directly. You are studying their portrayals?

Diana -
Correct, I look at news media, crime fiction, TV Drama, Films, Theater, etc. and analyse examples to see how crime and criminals are portrayed. This is how most people get their information about crime, so it is important to examine how these messages are conveyed to us. Also, I get to watch a lot of TV and movies and read lots of crime fiction which is a definite plus!

Fiona- 
I want that job! Can you tell us where the media gets it wrong? For example - if I am a writer, and I am basing criminal actions on a news account for my fictional work - what aspects would I be missing?

Diana-
The news media has a different agenda to just reporting news.
(Though they would like us to think they are devoted to giving us the facts.)
They are interested in selling newspapers, television

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

programs, etc. They present things in a way that we, the audience, will find 'entertaining'. An example is with sex crimes. Usually offences committed by strangers get into the news, but it is acquaintance rape and other sexual offences that are more prevalent. We get the idea that there is more of this kind of crime than is the case. We also see individual offenders represented in particular ways. Women who commit violent offences are often portrayed as being either plain evil
or mad [crazy]. There may be a thousand other reasons for their
actions, but these are not reported. The drama of danger is perceived
as being much more interesting and salable, so that is what makes it
into the news. If you are researching a story for a novel, you will get a
distorted version. The facts may be there, but they are presented
according to the media's agenda. That can mean that accuracy is lost and/or blurred.

Fiona -
How are your studies applied? And are they funded by government grants?

Diana-
As a cultural criminologist my work informs my university teaching. I don't do funded research although some of my colleagues do on different subjects. I write about crime and culture and teach my students how to be discerning about the information they receive. I feel that it is important to inform people that what they see and read isn't always as reliable as they might think

Fiona- 
 In your book, City of Devils, with James Murray on the cusp of the new study of criminology - how does your research inform the book and your writing in general?

Amazon Link

Diana-
The idea for the book came from my teaching. I was in a seminar discussing with students about the beginnings of criminology. In particular we were discussing Cesare Lombroso, the Italian who is known as the "father of modern criminology." My students asked me whether or not he investigated crimes. I'm not sure that he did in reality, but he could in fiction. I decided to write about it and use a fictional character, James Murray, to ask the questions that we might want the answers to. He is though very loosely based on Arthur Conan-Doyle, writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories (created around the corner from where I live!) I drew on my knowledge of criminology and also early forensics. I wanted to show how people thought about crime and criminals then, and how it isn't that different today. The media tend to focus on individual criminals and so did early criminologists like Lombroso. Most crime fiction is packed full of criminological theories even though not all the authors are aware of them.



Fiona - 
Can you give me an example of a theory that you see writers using - that they may not know is a criminology theory at work?

Diana-

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you have a character who is motivated by the need for material goods, perhaps affected by a desire to have what others do, then they may be an example of Robert Merton's strain theory. People are surrounded by advertisements for things but may not be able to afford them, so they respond to the strain of this by stealing. Someone may commit a violent offence because they have a psychological propensity to do so, perhaps because of a brain abnormality or injury (neuro-criminology).

Fiona - 
Is there a resource that you can recommend to writers who want to write about criminals - their motivations and realities?

Diana-
First of all, check out a criminology text book that outlines the theories. Then try reading some accounts of their crimes written by criminals or criminologists. There are some great examples and most of them are from the US. Examples include:
* Sutherland, E. H. (1956).
* The Professional thief. Thrasher, F. M. (2000).
* The Gang: a Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago.
* And of course there are classics like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood - one of my absolute favorites.
* But the best book I've come across is by Jack Katz - Seductions of Crime.

Fiona -
One final question - please tell us about your favorite scar.

Diana -
I have two scars - each from an episode where my brain seems to have gone missing. The first is from chasing my dog in our garden when I was 5. I tripped over and cut my lip. The dog was fine! The second is from when I broke my arm. I had a plaster cast up to my elbow, it was itching and I stuck a pen down there to scratch it. You guessed it! The pen had a top but when it came out of my plaster - no top there. Embarrassing!

Thanks, Diana! 

Fiona Quinn's Newsletter Link, Sign up HERE

Thank you so much for stopping by. And thank you for your support. When you buy my books, you make it possible for me to continue to bring you helpful articles and keep ThrillWriting free and accessible to all.