One of the most enjoyable parts of researching …
Delving into the details of the past to create a realistic world and a period-appropriate mystery in which challenges and obstacles arise from the mundane realities of life in New York City during the 1910s, is for me, one of the most enjoyable parts of researching and writing the Kitty Weeks Mystery series. So, for instance, in both A Front Page Affair and Murder Between the Lines the central mystery is connected with little-known actual events that occurred during the time, and these events feed into the plot right down to the day and date that they actually took place.
In Murder Between the Lines, the dead girl at the center of the mystery is known to be a sleepwalker and her sleepwalking is attributed to nervous tension brought on by too much schoolwork. That was a perfectly reasonable causal explanation in the 1910s! The schoolgirl’s death was inspired by a news story from late 1915, which I came across while scanning through the New York Times from November of 1915 to about February of 1916. I knew that was the timeframe in which I wanted to set the second book; about 3 or 4 months would have elapsed since the events in A Front Page Affair, and I wanted to open things up with President Wilson’s second marriage. While flipping through the papers I read about the “Girl Somnambulist Frozen to Death” and immediately knew I had found my crime/possible crime.
Most of my research is done through primary sources: newspapers, career guides, self-help books, medical books, etiquette guides, advertisements and so on… I also look at secondary sources, but then always pivot back to read the sources from the period that are referenced. In terms of writing historical fiction, one of the most interesting things for me is not presenting events as we might understand them today, but trying to understand how the same events were perceived during their time. So, in the case of the sleepwalker found frozen to death, in the 2010s, we would immediately question “too much schoolwork” as a cause, but in the 1910s, that opinion was backed up by doctors and medical books. And in fact, in the course of Kitty’s investigations, she speaks to a “nerve specialist” who tells her that girls who study too hard or work too much (like herself) are prone to all sorts of diseases. She has to get past that in order to solve the mystery.
About the Author:
Radha Vatsal is the author of the Kitty Weeks mystery series. Her latest book, Murder between the Lines (Sourcebooks), was published May 2.
