![]() When I do a bookstore event and 100 people show up, I am thrilled. Strangely enough, I have been connecting even more with readers because of things like Zoom. How have you been connecting with readers throughout the last year? And when we can’t travel, it is good to time travel and put ourselves in another time and place. During the most recent years of political upheaval and the pandemic, readers have been turning more and more to the past because it is comfortingly safe. In the mystery genre, at least justice is served and good triumphs over evil. Our world is often one of uncertainty and turmoil. ![]() What do you feel is the enduring power of the mystery genre and the historical mystery specifically? Once they have walked into my life, they take over the story and I just follow them! When you try to force characters into a plot and they don’t want to do what you are making them do, that’s when writer’s block occurs. Would you say that you are a writer driven more by storyline or character? Or are these threads fully intertwined in your process? We’d try food, knew the best gelato, swam at the Lido, and had a wonderful time. My parents would give my brother and me money and say, “See you at five o’clock,” and we’d be free to explore. This could be a very long answer! It started when I was a young teenager and my parents (on my aunt’s advice) rented a small villa on the mainland outside Venice. There’s no place anywhere quite like Venice. I also worked at the Museo Correr Library in Saint Mark’s Square. ![]() For The Venice Sketchbook, I wanted books on Venice in the 1930s and ‘40s and especially on how Jewish people were treated. I look at old photographs and I use local libraries extensively. I sit in city squares, listen to sounds, observe smells, watch people’s interactions. Obviously, when I am writing history, this isn’t always simple, but much of Tuscany, Venice, Nice, and New York City are unchanged. It’s very important to me to go to the place, to walk the streets, and get the feel. How do you go about capturing the atmosphere and nuances of a particular era in your writing? What particular resources or documents do you immerse yourself in to accomplish this? Then I thought, What if she was on that train?, and the plot took a new direction. I thought, Molly would have to know about that. When I was researching The Edge of Dreams, a Molly Murphy book, I discovered there was a crash of the elevated railway in New York City at that time. In writing Above the Bay of Angels, I discovered that Queen Victoria’s gentlemen were trying to bring down her Indian confidante. Farleigh Field was based on a plot by a group of aristocrats to aid Hitler. The Tuscan Child was based on a real airman’s account of escaping through Italy. Sometimes history is more background, but usually slivers of real events creep into my stories. If I’m going to choose a particular time and place, then real events that happened there have to happen in my books. How much do true historical events guide your storytelling? Do they serve more generally as points of embarkation, or do they directly inform the plot choices you make? Dialogue is important in my books.įrom Queen Victoria to World War II, your books are filled with rich history. I think this gave me a great feel of setting the scene, how to bring characters in and out, also the power of the spoken word. My first job after college was with BBC Drama and my first professional writing was radio plays. I grew up reading widely-golden age crime fiction, travel, history. I suppose the first of these is reading extensively. Tell me about the experiences that you feel have helped shape your voice as a writer. PW spoke with Bowen about her writing and research process and how her books have allowed her readers to travel-even at a time when they can’t seek passage themselves. In Bowen’s latest novel, The Venice Sketchbook, protagonist Caroline Grant follows clues left behind by her recently deceased great-aunt-clues that take her back to the Venice of the late 1930s. ![]() More often than not-and as circumstances allow-that means traveling to the places she writes about. As an author of historical mysteries set in far-flung, atmospheric locations, Rhys Bowen takes research seriously.
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